Of Hell and other Adventures
by Sailoramber
Summary: After Jack loots Hell, Will and Elizabeth come to him for help. the French have invaded Port Royal, and Jack is reluctantly forced to help them on their mad attempt to get it back. however, adventure calls, and they have to get there first. pre sequels.
1. Chapter 1

Pre note: despite how the start of this story may seem, it is not a Mary Sue, the girls do not magically find themselves in pirate land, they are merely telling the story with a backdrop of the modern tall ship program.

**Of Hell and other Adventures**

Chapter one

Rachael lay on the deck of the Lady Washington, looking up at the clear blue sky. She was a young woman now, fascinated by the sea and the legends of the tall ships that sailed the ocean for so long.

She was quite content to feel the gentle roll of the water beneath the ship. Some of her peers might say that learning to work a tall ship was too much work, or too boring. Some of her classmates might even complain that they couldn't smoke their cigarettes while on board.

But then, she despised many of those classmates; average American druggies who went to alternative school because they had no other choice. She was different; she was here because she wanted to be.

She could not get enough of traditional sailing, already she was a member of the longboat rowing team, the marine tech class, and the science at sea program, but she was also a functioning coxswain, and helped to repair the longboats, jolly boats, and even the lady Washington herself. When she got out of school she was hoping to find a permanent position on a tall ship. But for now she would have to settle for the science at sea program: a week sailing during spring break.

Beside her was Amber Lynn, one of the few people in the program who felt the same way about the sea as she did. There were a few others; Austin, Maria, and Sarah, but these were the exceptions to the rule, the rest of the thirty students on board were here for the credit, not the adventure.

Amber actually didn't have any other incentive for being here than the love of tall ships; she was home schooled. She came in every Tuesday for rowing practice and considered herself lucky that she had been able to come at all, the rowing instructor, Carl Brownstein, had had to write special permission to allow her to come.

There were few of the crew on deck, most people were below decks reading or sleeping, or doing other time killing activities, so aside from the people on watch; the helmsman, messengers, bow watch and navigator, they were the only two people on deck that didn't have a job at the moment.

Racheal breathed in deeply, the tang of the salt air clearing her mind, when Amber spoke.

"They should have kept the helms wheel." She said

"Huh?" Racheal responded intelligently.

"You know, from the movie." Amber elaborated.

"Well then it wouldn't be a historical replica of Captain Grays ship would it?" Racheal pointed out

"Still, a tiller just doesn't suit her at all."

"I agree, but it's not really our decision is it."

"Nah, I suppose not." Amber sighed. "But it was the helms wheel that Captain Jack Sparrow stood at." She continued.

"You mean Johnny Depp." Racheal corrected.

"No, I mean Jack Sparrow." Amber insisted

"He's a fictional character."

"He might have been, once. But I don't think that's the case any more. Look at all the people that character has affected. It's gone beyond fiction; Jack Sparrow is an archetype."

"You drank saltwater didn't you?" Racheal said with exasperation.

"No, listen. Think about it, every once in a while, a character comes along, and that character resonates with the public so much, that the character is almost alive."

"Like who?" Racheal asked, interested to see what other lunacy her friend could come up with.

"Like Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Jack O'Neill, or Spock. People think about these characters, relate to them as real people." Amber said earnestly. Racheal blinked, for once Amber seemed to making a weird kind of sense.

"So Jack Sparrow, in a sense, is a real person? I can live with that." Racheal went back to looking up at the sky. Amber smiled mischievously.

"I thought you might be able to." There was a companionable silence for a few moments before Racheal spoke again.

"This is my idea of heaven." She said to her friend. Amber looked off into the distance for a moment before responding.

"For me heaven is either sailing a twilight sea with ports of call with manga, anime, and margaritas, or playing jazz trumpet for a male strip club in New Orleans."

"You certainly have a very specific image of the afterlife.' Racheal said noncommittally. "What do you think Jack Sparrows heaven would be?"

"Sailing a sea of Stars on the edge of forever. But Jack Sparrow can't die, and if he did, he would cross through the veil alive and with his Pearl, tell Chiron to go to hell, and loot Hades." Amber said succinctly. Racheal smiled.

"That he would." Racheal said with a grin, imagining Jack Sparrow holding up Satan himself with a musket and a cutlass.

"I can just imagine it." Amber went on "Just hand over your valuables, savvy?" she said doing a fair impression of Sparrow. In her mind it was almost like a memory; she could see him doing it that clearly.

"And then Anamaria would say: 'Ey, what do you want me to do with this three headed dog?'" Racheal said, mimicking the pirate woman's cutting voice. Amber gestured broadly with her hands, much as Sparrow would and continued in her imitation of his voice.

"Just tell it it's a nice doggy, and whatever you do, don't call it a mangy cat."

And then it seemed as if they needed no words to tell the story, for the tale was telling itself.

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"Aye captain." Anamaria shouted in affirmative.

Jack Sparrow was pacing back and forth in front of the line of figures; being a well traveled man, he could name off most of them; Satan, Hades, Kali, Hecate, Persephone, Hel, and so on and so forth.

Jack was currently holding a pistol on them, and they watched him with wary eyes as his boots crunched over the brimstone on the bank of the river Styx. Behind him the Pearl rested majestically upon the black waters, dark sails clewed up and illuminated by the fiery lights of hell. Some of the lesser creatures of the afterlife were being dealt with by other members of the crew; Anamaria had successfully collared Cerberus, Marty the dwarf was sitting on the grim reapers back, picking his teeth with its scythe, and Gibbs was- well okay, he didn't actually know were Gibbs was.

Probably halfway through a barrel of rum. This brought him to his next subject;

"Were do you keep your rum? We've got a lot of celebratin' to do. It's not ev'ry day Jack Sparrow becomes an uncle."

They looked at him incredulously before one of them spoke up in a disbelieving voice;

"You sail up the river Styx, collar Cerberus, hold the collective deities of the underworld at gunpoint and all you want is rum?!" Jack looked at the man in annoyance, it was one of the gods he didn't recognize; one of those blasted oriental ones.

"Yes, rum. What else is a man supposed to drink?" he said as if it were obvious, waving a hand in the air to punctuate his point. His gun remained trained on them though, even as he appeared to sway with the movement of the sea while standing on dry land.

The goddess Hel spoke up in a cultured voice;

"We gods drink Ambrosia, far better than any mortal alcohol."

"Nah, tried that; didn't have enough kick to it. Might take some back for Will though, 'e's gonna need somethin' stiff now that 'e's a father like." He put his finger to his lips, face upturned, apparently deep in thought.

Around him his crew continued to load the treasures of the underworld onto the Black Pearl; two of the men were carrying a heavy chest with seraphim carved onto the top, halfway up the gang plank one of them cursed and dropped his side, and Jack looked at them in alarm.

"Careful with that! That thing's been lost for a millennia! We can't have you seasick dogs dropping it into the drink!"

Thinking perhaps that Jack was distracted enough to surprise, Hades shifted on his feet, ready to make his move. Without even looking back, Jack said.

"Try anything and you'll have one of these iron bullets between your eyes and eating away at your brains, savvy?"

"How-?" one of them started to ask. But was cut off as Jack resumed his pacing and spoke;

"Turns out critters like you have an aversion to iron, isn' that right? Acts kind of like acid doesn' it?" he asked.

The deities, still looking as if they were getting over the shock of being referred to as 'critters' by a madman with a rum fetish, merely nodded.

"Oh good, now that we understand one another would you be so kind as to direct me to the ambrosia? If you don't have rum, I might as well make do."

One of them pointed off down one of the many tunnels that riddled hell like a rabbit warren. Jack needn't have asked; for no sooner had Lucifer pointed than Gibbs came stumbling out with an incandescent bottle in each hand, and two men struggling to carry a large crate behind him.

"Good man, Gibbs." Jack called "watch your step there. No not there- there." Gibbs went sprawling, and upon righting himself attempted to wander off in another direction.

"The ships' that way Gibbs." as the graying man finally moved past Jack and onto the Pearl, he appeared to be holding a conversation with a beautiful woman, a woman that Jack apparently was unable to see.

Thinking thoughts of drunken delusions Jack turned back to the main cavern, his attention drawn to the pirate woman dragging a man along behind her.

"'Ey capt'n, look who I found." Anamaria came striding up to Jack dragging along none other than Bootstrap Bill.

People say that young William Turner looks just like his father, well, likewise his father looks just like him, save for a few details. His hair was longer than his son's, and much darker, tied back in a sailors pig tail. Despite this restraint, some managed to escape the tattered black ribbon that held it back, and the loose strands hung in front of his face, giving a sinister cast to his green eyes, another marked difference. It was not just the hair that gave Bill's eyes a dark cast, but an overall knowledge of the world; Bootstrap had seen a lot, not all of it pretty.

Despite his tenure in hell, he was dressed similarly to the attire he had always worn in life; a faded black vest worn over a bare chest, missing all of it's buttons but held closed by a heavy baldric, a sword belt, and a stained, but still vivid crimson sash. One would expect the broad and powerful bare arms to be decorated with tattoos from all corners of the ocean, but unlike so many other pirates, Bill had never once let ink and needle touch his skin, preferring to let his scars, of which he had many, to tell his tale.

His threadbare britches ended snug about his upper calves, just short of his boots, the boots for which he received his name. They were knee high, but unlike most, did not have the tops turned down, per fashion. They were black leather, scuffed and worn, and creased with use. The most unusual thing about these boots however, was that they were covered in tight, buckled straps, from ankle to knee.

"Oh good, you did find 'im then. I was worried he'd gone and gotten himself into heaven; it would'a been a might harder to sail up to the pearly gates. This'll be a fine surprise for Will!"

"What do you mean 'A fine surprise' Jack? I've been dead for ten years! It won't just surprise him; it'll give the kid fits!"

"Ah, you do have a point. But in those self same ten years your son was rescued from a burning merchant vessel, brought to Port Royal, and apprenticed to a blacksmith. Then after leading a blameless life of loyalty to the crown, broke me out oughta' jail, became a pirate, fought and killed our former crew, which, I might add were undead in the first place, rescued a damsel and married. Oh, and he's an expecting father soon."

"Is that all?" Bootstrap looked slightly put out

"I think so, but give 'im a rest, he 'ad a late start."

Bootstrap shrugged and Jack gave him a consoling pat on the back, and then gave him a push towards the Pearl. Jack watched with a nostalgic feeling as Anamaria guided Bill up the gangplank. It was nice to see his old friend again, and he couldn't wait to see the look on Wills' face when he introduced him to his father. It would be worth a thousand barrels of rum, that would. Well maybe not a thousand, that was an awful lot of rum after all.

He turned back to the gods of the afterlife, a conglomerate of deities from every culture in the world. This was not the first time he had hoodwinked all powerful beings, but he had never conned so many at once, it was, he had to admit, slightly unnerving, so he was careful never to allow his pistol to waiver from its mark.

He did not even stop to worry about the fact that the pistol was in fact, quite empty, and had been since he had shot Barbosa. He was not foolish enough to think that anything on the mortal plane could harm a god. What was important was that the gods believed that the pistol was loaded, and that it could actually hurt them, because, if the gods believed it, then it was true.

If Jack squeezed the trigger, a magic bullet with acidic properties would shoot out; all because Jack had been able to convince them that he was in possession of such ammunition that could harm them.

It was Jacks personal rule number one for hunting gods; 'Use an empty gun, that way there is no reality to interfere with fantasy.' It had worked the first time.

Finally, when his crew was done loading up their well earned plunder, and the Pearl was bursting at the seams with all the loot, Jack allowed himself to smile. Then, thinking better of stealing a kiss from the lovely Persephone, began backing up the gangplank and onto the well worn planks of the Black Pearls deck.

Even after two years of being back in command of his dark lady, the feel of his boots on the smooth planking still brought a tingle of joy to his heart; it was the feeling of home, but it was more than that as well; it was the feeling of freedom.

"Strike the gangplank and cast off mooring lines, Weigh anchor! Get us ready to make way!" He shouted, and his crew scrambled to obey, dodging nimbly around the crates and loose treasure that had yet to be stowed in the hold. His crew had been puzzled by the order to drop the anchor right next to a perfectly good dock, and then attach mooring lines anyway, but Jack knew that the Pearl, although she had been a sailing hell for nigh ten years, did not belong in the underworld, so he wanted as many points of contacts as possible to keep the Pearl stabilized in this otherworld. The plank was hastily loaded on board, the lines were cast off, and soon the clanking of the great chain could be heard as the anchor was dragged out of the river, and Jack was glad to see that it had not been corroded by the black waters. His Pearl was made of sterner stuff than mere death.

He suspected that he would not need to careene the bottom for quite a while, seeing as how the poisonous water had probably taken care of any pervasive creatures clinging to the bottom. This, he thought, would be a truly welcome bonus, as one of sailor's worst duties was the odious job of cleaning the bottom, an arduous task of beaching the ship and systematically scraping off every bit of detritus, barnacle by barnacle.

So the trip was worth it just for the removal of this biannual task, even without the loot, ambrosia, and Bootstrap.

Almost by magic Bootstrap was by his side as if summoned by Jacks thoughts, which, given the circumstance, was not entirely impossible. A fellow could get strange powers when he was dead, Jack knew from experience.

"You haven't gone all telepathic like, have you mate?" Jack asked impulsively. Bill gave him an odd look.

"What kind of question is that Jack? I'm dead, not a fortune teller." He said with a grin. As the ship began moving back down the river, he thought of something and his grin faded slightly.

"Are you sure you're going to be able to take me out of here?"

Jack shrugged.

"Shouldn't be much of a problem. Tha's the nice thing about the underworld; you take your body with you when you go down, so when you go back to the land of the living through more direct routes than reincarnation, you can take it back up."

Bootstrap looked at him dubiously

"So you're sure that I won't just disintegrate in sunlight?"

"Of course I'm sure! I wouldn't have come an' gotten you if I didn' think I'd be able to take you back out. All you have to do is wear this." Jack tossed him a black gem the size of a grape.

Bill looked at it dubiously; trying to figure out what it was and were exactly he was supposed to wear it. Jack must have sensed his confusion, for he explained;

"Not sure what it's called exactly, but I do know that lesser creatures of the underworld wear 'em when they're making prolonged visits to the mortal realm. Keeps 'em from snapping back to hell, see."

"How am I supposed to wear it?"

"Oh, that. You just stick it in the middle of your forehead like those Hindu belly dancers do."

Jack demonstrated by taking the gem and pressing it into his friend's brow, were it seemed to adhere easily. When Jack took his hand away he showed Bill his reflection in the glass on the binnacle near the helms wheel.

There, nestled in his dark bangs so he could barely see it, was the black jewel, glinting like a third eye. Bootstrap was somewhat surprised that he could see his reflection at all, and so took a moment to examine himself. After being trapped in Hades for so long, he had forgotten what he looked like; he was pleasantly surprised to find the same handsome devil that had terrorized the British navy with Jack ten years ago. Same jaw line, same nose, same green eyes, same hair tarred back into a long ponytail with his bangs hanging down around his face.

It was strange, rediscovering himself in this fashion, made all the more ironic that he was looking down at the reflective surface of a compass to find himself.

"You know Bill, you've given me quite a chase." Jack said, snapping Bootstrap out of his strange reverie. He shook his head to clear it before responding;

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I didn't think to find you in Hades." Jack elaborated

"To tell the truth, I expected you to be there before I even arrived, Jack. You must have been on that island for two weeks by the time they killed me, how did you survive?"

Jack thought a moment and then decided to stick with the fairytales.

"Sea turtles." He said picking an explanation out of the air. Bootstrap gave him an amused look.

"Somehow, I doubt that."

"But I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." Jack said with a look of mock hurt and a hand on his chest.

"I'm well aware of that Captain. And I know for a fact that what you said you did and what you really did often differ a great deal."

"It was sea turtles, I swear!" Jack said with a grin.

"It was a Rum Runner island wasn't it?"

"How'd you guess?"

"I knew they were active in the area, it was the only reason I didn't fight Barbosa when the bastard mutinied. But when you didn't come charging to the rescue in the nick of time I thought I was wrong… What about you, why didn't you think to find me in hell?"

"You were supposed to be cursed you lummox. I thought for sure that even after me traitorous crew cast you to the depths, that you'd 'ave found your way to land by walking on the bottom." Jack told him, making walking motions with his fingers. Bootstrap rested his arms on the rail, looking down into the ghostly depths of water that after ten years had finally become familiar to him.

"I was never cursed Jack, I took the gold from the chest, but not for myself. I was the only man there who did not have greed on my mind that day. When I saw what was happening to the others, I knew my time was short and sent the coin to my son, hoping that somehow some good would come of such a terrible legacy." Bill glanced up to his friends face, Jack looked thoughtful.

"You know Bootstrap, you always were too high minded for your own good, I swear your boys just like you." He informed him. Bill smiled.

"So he did turn out okay then?"

"If by okay you mean an incurably dull eunuch, then sure, the kids just fine."

"Eunuch? I thought you said he was to be a father!"

"It must have grown back." Jack muttered darkly; in his opinion, people who were that incredibly honest shouldn't be allowed to reproduce, it made life too unpredictable.

Ahead of them the veil between the worlds became visible; a great swirling curtain of purple and blue mist.

Jack directed his attention to the task of crossing back into the real world and began shouting orders to the crew. Bootstrap, with an amused shake of his head at Jacks antics, went to work as if he had never left the Pearl, and in a strange sense, he hadn't.

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AN: this is my newest story, and my first Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic, feel free to blast it to hell, just so long as you review.

I'd like to know what you think of the story telling format. if it isn't any good, I can change it.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two

"So what do you think happened next?" Racheal asked Amber.

"Isn't it obvious? They crossed back into the real world, and set sail for Port Royal." Amber said, still using flamboyant gestures and a rough voice as if she were channeling Jack Sparrow's fictional spirit.

Amber had a very vivid imagination, and her hobbies included acting, writing her own book, and studying Wicca, so it was not that far a stretch if she _were _channeling the pirate's spirit.

Amber raised a finger for silence, ready to continue with their story

"That should have been that, but what Sparrow and his crew of cutthroats didn't know, was that they had taken on other passengers than just Bootstrap… He and his crew were quite literally raising hell." She said.

Racheal grinned, imagining all the mischief and mayhem that could be wrought from supernatural stowaways.

"Let me guess, hells own rats, spirits with unusual dispositions, and one or two famous pirates to boot." Racheal summarized.

"Aye." Amber said with a nod of her head and a grin of her own.

---------------------------------------------

Jack was woken from his sleep by a loud moaning, eerie and spine chilling, coming from the starboard side wall. With a growl he rolled over and pounded on the wall.

"Give it a rest Emily sweet'art, I'm not planning to marry at all if I can help it. So could you do a man a favor and let me get some sleep?" he paused as moaning cut off. "That's a good lass." He mumbled before rolling back over and trying to go back to sleep. It was not to be however, for no sooner had he pulled the blanket over his head than there was a knock on his door. Thankfully it was followed by a human voice, not another unearthly wail.

"Capt'n, the Morning Star 'as just been sited abeam the port side, and the Purgatory and the Lady Luck are coming at us from the starboard." Cullins poked his head in to announce.

If Emily's wailing hadn't woken him before, that news did it. What were three of the most fearsome lady captains doing closing with him? Aside from the obvious that is. He couldn't remember having insulted any of the three, what's more he hadn't even met captain Shotts or captain Gabriel, and the last time he had seen Morgan Adams had been twenty years ago, after she had done a fair job of blowing up most of Port Royal.

He hadn't even heard of Black Lynn Gabriel or Long Nine Shotts except by rumor, and those seemed to be confused over whether or not they even existed, they were not part of the brethren of the coast.

True, many of the crews who accepted women into their ranks were not part of the brethren, but they usually garnered more attention for it, not less. However, he had a sneaking suspicion that the two fabled captains were so good that the English refused to even acknowledge their existence, because then the navy would have to acknowledge that they had failed to stop the two. It was the same thing that was happening to the Black Pearl, if not for Norrington, Jack suspected the navy would try to forget him altogether.

In a way Jack felt grateful to the commodore; because of him, stories would never stop being told about the daring exploits of Captain Jack Sparrow. Captain Gabriel wanted no such legacy however, and because Captain Shotts was supposedly allied with her, this carried over to her exploits as well.

Captain Morgan Adams of the Morningstar was another story however; she was as much of a navy baiter as he was, and many knew of her adventures. It was the talk of taverns as to whether or not she would ever die, having already reached the grand old age (for a pirate) of forty.

"What the devil are they doing?" Jack asked Cullins. Before the young man had a chance to reply however, a spirit walked through the wall. This time it was Granail, a pirate of long ago, largely known as the undisputed pirate queen of English waters. He would have to pick up the woman out of hell, it was just his luck.

"Set the sails, and put the wind to our backs, they'll never take us alive!" she shouted, waving her cutlass in the air.

"I don't think you have to worry about being taken alive, love." He told her. It was a pity really, by all accounts, the woman had been one of the most successful pirates in history, yet in death she seemed unhinged, to say the least. The word 'deranged' kept coming to mind.

He had unfortunately acquired many ghosts and other creatures during his visit to hell. He had assumed that after a few days they would just go back to hell, but it seemed this was not the case; even without the little black gems, they were still out here in the real world, though they didn't have corporeal bodies like Bill did. Apparently, the gems allowed a creature to take a real body to the outside world, but were not necessary to leave hell.

Many of the stowaways were not very noticeable except by long the term effects that accompanied them, but the human spirits were most noticeable. Aside from Emily, a pretty girl in a rotting wedding gown, and Granail, a mad woman who had at one time commanded her own fleet of ships in piracy against the English crown, there was Mary Reed, who seemed much happier than when Jack had met her in life, and Cemeille.

He had only met Mary Reed once, yet during that short meeting he could tell she was just looking for an excuse to die. When Rhackham's ship was taken, and the crew tried, she had pleaded the belly, but she had died in prison before giving birth. Now, meeting her after her demise, she was definitely in better spirits.

The last one was Cemeille din Selaan Long Eyes, a strange woman whose brocaded clothing was odd even to Jacks well traveled eye, she also had several pieces of gold jewelry, her ears were pierced with several rings, and on her left side a chain ran from the lowermost earring to a nose ring, and the chain was hung with several small medallions. She claimed to be a sail mistress, as if the title held import, but it made little sense to Jack.

The only thing he could think of as to her origins was that she must be from a very long time ago, from a nation that no longer existed, possibly even a people who no longer existed.

His crew, thankfully, had taken these supernatural ladies in stride, likely because Anamaria could be scarier than any ghost.

Looking disappointed, Granail sheathed her ghostly sword and walked back through the wall. He could hear her grumbling through the wall.

"What good does being a ghost do if you can't scare the piss out of someone?"

Jack turned to Cullins, a thin man with a mess of black hair. Before he could even be asked the man reported.

"Their sails are reefed and they're signals say they want a gam." He said casually. Jack considered this for a moment.

"Do they now? Best get the guns ready, just in case." he told Cullins. Cullins nodded before strolling off, his gait deliberately slow, Cullins was trying to break himself of the navy mans habit of scurrying to carry out every little order. Haste was necessary sometimes, but a man has to prioritize, it's not worth getting winded over a minor order. Though admittedly, readying the guns was not so small an order. Jack would have to have a word with him.

Since pirates rarely bother to change clothes when they go to sleep, Jack only had to pause to snatch his coat and hat before exiting his quarters in the stern castle. He made his way up the companionway and found himself on a deck illuminated by a bright moon that cast a tangle of shadows upon the deck as it illuminated the rigging above him.

Despite the late hour; a few men (and women) were on deck, taking watches. Anamaria was at the helm, and Cullins stood besides her, once again resuming his post as messenger, young mister Chen was aloft in the tops, and Tom stood at the bow, watching the water for hidden sand bars or coral reefs.

Below decks, Jack could hear thumps and clangs as Madding and his crew readied the guns. Other than that the night was quiet, and the gentle sound of the ocean around him lulled him, not into a sense of security, necessarily, but a feeling of belonging. This combined with the small thrill of excitement running through him at the possibility that, if something went wrong, he would be facing three to one odds, made him glad to be alive and with his Pearl, even if that state wasn't permanent.

He fished his spy glass out of his pocket and put it to his eye, examining the oncoming ships. He turned his glass first to the Morning Star, the sturdy Caravel that Captain Adams commanded, she was indeed flying colors of truce, and there did not seem to be much activity on deck, as there would be if she were preparing to attack. He swung his glass over to port side, were the Purgatory and the Lady Luck glided sedately through the calm waters. It was a general misconception that the purgatory was the great war ship, but it was the Lady Luck that loomed largely on the horizon; it was rumored she had over two hundred guns. The purgatory was the smaller brigantine in the lead, her red and black hull knifing through the water like a porpoise, some said she was even faster than the Black Pearl! Not bloody likely, but she was fast nonetheless

All three ships were proud upon the sea, and well cared for even by navy standards. He supposed women captains were different in that respect; a normal pirate ship usually lasted only a matter of years before it rotted out from underneath its crew, and though his Pearl was a different case entirely, it was not so with their ships; hard work and elbow grease obviously went into those vessels care. But then, he knew from experience, that when you found something special, you wanted to preserve it for as long as possible, and for these women captains, their ships were not just tools, they were the saviors that had freed them from the bonds of society.

Pirates rarely met each other on the open seas, but when they did the results were usually quite bloody, unless the respective captains of each vessel were very careful. This is why it was more than strange that he was now faced with three infamous ships. They were obviously deliberately looking for him, and he wondered what for.

_Four ghostly dames at me back, and three live ones coming at me._ He thought_ what more could a man ask for?_

"Run up the signals. Tell 'em if they want to talk, to get their arses on over here." He told the air in general, trusting that the order would be heeded. One could not always trust for obedience on a pirate ship, as he well knew, but he was fairly confident that the order would be carried out.

No sooner had the flags been run up, than longboats were launched from each of the approaching ships. With twelve oarsmen a-piece, the longboats cut through the water quickly, arriving at their destination in about ten minutes. Lines were thrown up to men waiting at the Pearls gunnels, and even as the lines were being tied down, the three captains ascended up the small ladders lowered down to them.

The sight that greeted him was indeed something; though they were not soft maids with milky skin, each of them possessed her own wild beauty, as one might say a stormy sea is beautiful.

Captain Morgan was an impressive sight, with unruly black hair curling about her tanned face, she held fast to an ageless beauty only slightly marred by laugh lines and an almost imperceptible scar, she wore well fitting coat and breeches that had obviously been tailored to her form. Behind her came her first mate and consort, a thief by the name of William Shaw, who had blond hair and inexplicably white teeth.

Across the deck, Captain Gabriel was the first to come over the starboard side gunnel; she wore a long black navy great coat with a white shirt that had a great deal of lace at the throat and cuffs, and her hat was a broad brimmed affair, with one side folded up and three great feathers pluming up like a crest on some exotic bird. A very dangerous bird; her blue eyes were as hard as flint, and her pale hair was tarred back in a severe fashion. Rumor really hadn't done her justice, up until now he had not quite understood how the royal navy could actually fear a woman, but looking into those icy augers that might be called eyes on a normal person, he was prepared to believe that she considered skinning navy officers alive to be light entertainment, though the rumors didn't seem to say she did anything like that.

Next over the gunnel came Gabriel's ally, Captain Shotts, whom rumor had it was Gabriel's daughter. She certainly didn't look as if she were related to Gabriel, not with a flaming top like that; perhaps she was just a protégé. One way or the other, she was at least ten years younger than the other woman. Long Nine Shotts, in Jacks opinion, was very probably the worst dresser on the Caribbean. She was decked out in what could have been considered sensible garments, if they had not been plum purple and a horrible bright green. She had a brace of pistols tucked into a slanting sword belt, and a glint of insanity shone in her eyes; not the good kind of insanity either, it was the kind that made a man enjoy killing too much, until they were no better than rabid dogs. She did not appear to have slipped that far though, but it was still there, lurking behind deceptively frivolous green eyes.

"So ladies, how can I be of service?" he asked in mock civility. He stood upon the quarter deck, one hand on his cutlass, and the other tracing lazy patterns through the air; it was a position specifically calculated to make him appear taller, so as to leave no doubt in their mind who was captain of the vessel they were standing on.

Before they had a chance to reply though, yet another ghost swept across the deck; well, two actually. Mary Reed ran past, clutching something in her hand, and was quickly followed by Granail, who was yet again waving her insubstantial cutlass through the air in a threatening manner.

"Give that here, you big eyed harlot! I've already claimed all the plunder to be had on this ship, and I won't have you stealing my gold!" Granail yelled before she disappeared into the fo'c'stle after Reed.

"Good god, they're looting my ship from under me." Jack muttered. As for the three captain's reactions, they were all variations on nothing; he thought Morgan might have blinked a bit, but that was it.

Jack descended the steps, bringing his head level with theirs.

"So it's true, you did sail to the afterlife and back." Gabriel said succinctly. Jack very nearly jumped out of his skin; _how the blazes did she know about that?_ Jack himself hadn't known he was going to do it till the very day he passed through the veil, and at that point he hadn't had any contact with other vessels for close to a week. Well if she knew, then there wasn't much reason to hide it.

"I did indeed. Would you lasses fancy some ambrosia? 's imported." He added unnecessarily.

"No thank you captain, I am already hard enough to kill as it is, and I have hopes of dying of old age at least. I have no desire to become immortal." Gabriel replied scornfully, though unconsciously she fingered a hole in her coat, just below her left breast.

So the stories were true; they didn't call her Black Lynn for nothing. It was said that when her husband was killed, she tried to commit suicide over his body, thrusting a blade deep into her heart. Only when the blade pierced her flesh, she didn't die, her blood turned black. Rumor was never sure on the point of why she survived though, some said that her husband reached beyond the grave to protect her, others say that she had no heart to begin with, and still others say she's a sea witch who killed her own husband to gain immortality. Somehow Jack doubted that last one, but the first and second seemed credible enough.

He turned to the others, but both Shotts and Morgan seemed disinterested, and though Shaw expressed an interest, he was quickly quelled by a look from Morgan.

"So its righ' down to business then?" he asked them. Gabriel nodded in a condescending manner that would befit a queen, while Shotts grinned lazily, well, leered was more the term, but he tried not to think of it that way. Before they could speak however, Shaw interrupted:

"I don't know about you two ladies, but we're here to repay a favor, and as soon as that's done, we'll be on our way." He said amiably. Morgan glanced at him, no more than a flick of the eyes, but he backed down immediately. To late though, the damage was done.

"Favor?" Jack asked them with a calculating look on his face. Morgan sighed heavily.

"Yes, a favor. A young woman named Elizabeth Swann asked me to find you and take her to you. Can't imagine why." Morgan stated with a look of amusement that said she certainly _did_ know why. "Why she brought her husband along is another question entirely, though. Bit of a stick if you ask me." She confided.

"He's a eunuch." Jack informed her, purely out of habit. Too late he realized how that must sound on top of their already perverse assumptions. Morgan smirked, Long Nine laughed, and even Gabriel's eyebrow twitched in amusement.

"Well, there's always something to be said for enthusiasm." Shaw supplied helpfully. Jack heard Anamaria snicker behind him, he rounded on her:

"Not a word." He warned

"Wouldn't dream of it capt'n. Besides, it doesn't look like you need any of my help to embarrass your self." She replied with a face so blank Jack could tell she was struggling not to say anything else.

Turning back to the captains, he decided a subject change was in order.

"You owe Miss Swann a favor? What for?" he asked Adams.

"Well you see-" Shaw began, but Morgan cut him off.

"That's between me and Elizabeth. If she wants to tell you, I'm sure you'll find out eventually." She glanced at the horizon, which was beginning to pale slightly in the east. "I will return to the Morning Star and send her and her husband over… I am sure you will all want to get reacquainted." She said with a very knowing look. Bloody woman; she was _trying _to make him angry. Outwardly of course, he completely ignored the comment, as was appropriate of a captain.

Captain Shotts seated her self on the Pearls gunnels as Morgan strode off, back to her longboat. The moon grew fainter and fainter in the sky as the east lightened; the horizon was turning a very light shade of yellow, though true sunrise was still at least an hour off. As the light grew brighter, Shotts's clothing seemed even more garish.

Jack glanced grumpily to the starboard side, were Morgan Adams had departed; _women will be the end of me._ It wasn't just that they were always laughing at a mans expense, but they had to deliberately antagonize you about it too. With a scowl he turned back to face Gabriel and Shotts.

"And I suppose you've come to tell me that Giselle and Scarlet 'ave come looking for me as well." He said darkly. Gabriel's mouth twisted in a manner that spoke of distaste.

"Whoever those women are and what they would want with you is none of my concern, I am hardly a passenger courier. I have come here for a different reason…" at this point she hesitated, as if she were unsure about what she was about to say; indecisiveness hardly suited her face. Shotts chose to finish for her:

"She wants to go to the underworld. Fool notion if you ask me, but if you did it, she's sure she can do it." she said casually. Jack tried very hard not to stare; was the woman that desperate to die?

"I'd 'ardly call m'self a religious man, but I can't stand by suicide, if that's what you're planning'." He told her.

"And if I did want to kill myself, I would hardly let you stand in my way. However, the information you give me would go to another purpose. We are looking for a key, of sorts, that is said to rest in the unseen land." Gabriel said.

"Well if you're looking for something like that, there's a good chance it's on the Pearl; we looted a good portion of hell before we left." Jack told her with a note of relief in his voice.

"If you do have the key I am looking for, I would be willing to pay you ten times what its worth." She replied imperiously. Jack, suspicious by necessity, balked at the thought of taking them below decks. If they decided that they liked the treasure too much, it was two against one odds in a fight that he would much rather avoid.

"How's about you ladies describe it to me, and I'll have our quarter master go see if we have it?" he suggested. Gabriel nodded her assent while Long-Nine played mimblety peg on the rail. Jack winced a little as the knife bit into the dark wood, and he could almost feel Anamaria bristling behind him; as bosun, it would be her job to smooth out the gouges.

"The key I am looking for is a map key." Gabriel said, recapturing Jacks attention. "It will be inside a silver worked glass tube, decorated like the oriental perfume bottles."

"A map key, eh? Where's this map lead?" he asked, wondering if it was a treasure, and if so, if he could wrangle a share of it. Not that he needed it; he had enough swag on Isle de Muerta to last several lifetimes, but he was a pirate after all, and old habits die hard.

"It is not the kind of treasure you would know what to do with, Captain Sparrow, but rest assured that if something there is meant for you, it will find its way to you." She replied cryptically. _Now what did she mean by that? If something there was meant for him?_ He put it aside, he would likely get nothing more out of her, and he did not want to push his luck. Instead he instructed Cullins to find Gibbs, who was the quarter master.

Many pirate ships did not have such delineated rank, most made do with only a captain, and a bosun. Jack however, had found that the men (and women) worked better if they had assigned tasks, so he had most of the same ranks on board that the navy had. Of course his crew were not typical pirates either, many of them thought of themselves not as pirates, but as opportunistic adventurers, sharing the same love of the horizon that Jack had. After all, if all they wanted was the gold, they would have quit as soon as they recovered the Isle de Muerta treasure.

Cullins soon returned with Gibbs in tow. To Jacks surprise, Gibbs already had the silver worked glass in his hands.

"That was fast." Jack commented. Gibbs had never been known for his efficiency.

"Aye, t'was Lylith that found it for me." The man replied. Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Lylith?" he asked. They had no one named Lylith on board. What was Gibbs talking about now? Gibbs gestured to his side, were there was quite clearly nothing there.

"Lylith." He confirmed. "I brought her onboard when we where in hell. I couldn't just let a pretty little thing like her rot in that terrible place." He finished. Jack, and Gabriel both stared at the place he had indicated, looking for some sign of a creature or spirit, even captain Shotts paused her game of mimblety peg to look, but try as they might, they could see nothing in the growing morning light.

"Er, Gibbs? You do know that there's nothing there, right mate?" Jack asked him.

"No, there's something there." Shotts interrupted. "I can see her. She has purple eyes, right Mister Gibbs?" she queried. Gibbs nodded, glad that somebody else could see her and prove he wasn't just losing his wits. Jack just nodded; he wasn't going to make a fuss of it, but he personally thought both of them were a bit addled.

He took the little tube carefully from Gibbs, handling it gingerly; one could never be too careful when examining something of a supernatural nature. He held it up to the dim morning light, so Gabriel could see it.

"Is this what you're looking for then?" he asked her. She inspected it closely, an excited gleam forming in her eyes.

"How much do you want for it?" she asked him.

"For a pretty dame like you, a kiss." He told her roguishly. Gabriel stiffened, and Shotts got a wary look in her eyes, and Jack could almost feel the slap before it came. When the blow actually came his vision dimmed, and he could see stars for several seconds.

When he regained the use of his senses, he was surprised to find himself sitting on the deck. Gabriel stood over him, her hands clasped behind her back, in a gesture that many navy officers used to convey a sense of calm. She gave him a dangerous look.

"I have killed men for less, but killing you would make the English happy, so I will not." She informed him as if commenting on the price of bread in Cuba. Jack raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"I won't deny I deserved that, but bloody hell woman, what do you do for a hobby? Wrestle sharks with your bare hands?" He groused, rubbing his hand across his jaw. For some strange reason she smiled, a cruel, empty smile, but still a smile. It was captain Shotts that replied though.

"You don't want to know what her hobby is, trust me." She said with a wicked grin.

Jack stood up, and rolled his tongue along the inside of his mouth, tasting blood. He handed the key to Gabriel.

"Just take the bloody thing and get off my ship. I've got enough gold to last me a four or five lifetimes." He told them sullenly.

Gabriel looked at him curiously.

"I am sure that you are aware that if you truly did find ambrosia, that you will quite probably live those four or five lifetimes." She told him. Jack realized suddenly that she was right; he had had ambrosia, even if he hadn't found it to his liking. Ambrosia was what made the gods immortal, did that mean was he immortal now? Time enough for that later.

"Not at the rate I'm going." He stated with an expansive gesture around him. "In case you haven't noticed love, piracy isn't exactly a profession with a good health plan."

"Actually, I hadn't encountered that problem yet." She informed him icily. Then, she turned on her heel and marched back to the ladder and disappeared over the gunnel. Long Nine paused for a moment.

"You should have seen her the time they tried to execute her; after they found out that they couldn't hang her, they turned her into a pincushion for swords. It didn't work" And with that, she too, was over the gunnel.

As the sun rose over the horizon, the first rays touched the sparkling water. Jack took his spy glass out again and went to the gunnel, watching Gabriel's long boat, _the hand basket_, as it pulled away. She didn't appear to be bursting into flames, but vampires weren't supposed to be able to cross moving water anyway, so that ruled that out. Maybe she had gotten a hold of one of those cursed coins. No that wasn't right either, she had supposedly lost her husband close to seven years ago, and that was when she supposedly gained her strange immortality. If she had had a coin then, the curse would never have been lifted.

No, he decided, we all have our own forms of immortality, be they curses or blessings, hers was suited to her, and no one else. He watched her till she was a speck on the side of her ship, the purgatory. _Going to hell in a hand basket, huh?_ At least she had a sense of humor. She was a dangerous woman though, and if he never saw her again, it would be too soon.

Jacks attention was drawn from the departure of the Lady Luck and the Purgatory by the promised arrival of Will Turner and his bonny bride, Elizabeth Swann. As they arrived, Jack noticed that they both seemed drawn, gaunt, as if they hadn't had enough to eat lately; a likely probability, considering their journey had been booked on a pirate ship. He still hadn't figured out how Elizabeth had managed that.

Miss Swann had to be carried up by a large man from the Morning Star's crew; looking at her, Jack realized Elizabeth was still just as lovely as ever, despite her bulging belly.

Though they both looked slightly malnourished, they were both fastidiously clean, as always, but their clothing belied their long journey; it was threadbare in places, and Jack could see were rips had been repaired. He wondered why the two had gone to so much trouble to find him, they both knew he would be back in Port Royal one way or the other, in disguise or being marched to the gallows; he had promised them he would return before the babe was born, and so he would have, if they had not come to him.

"What the devil are you two doing sailing with Captain Morgan?" he asked them as soon as Will's head poked over the gunnel. They looked at each other, an almost scared glance, as if wondering what to tell him. That wouldn't do at all.

"Rest easy," he told them "It's bloody good to see you, as always, but Miss Swann looks to be in no condition to travel." Yet despite his words they still looked shell shocked. The bald man who had carried Elizabeth on board gave them both pitying glances before departing. A shiver went down Jacks spine; something was wrong.

"What's 'appened?" Jack asked in alarm, Will looked as if he were about to cry; and it was Elizabeth who answered.

"The French… Port Royal has been taken by the French."

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AN: what do you think, shall I continue? If it's crap, tell me, I'd like to know before I invest too much of my time in it.

Oh, and whoever can tell me exactly were the ghosts and captain Morgan came from will get a special character in my story, just review and tell me were you think they came from and a description of your character and name, and if your right you will see yourself appear in my story!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter three

"Port Royal taken by the French?" Racheal asked. "Amber are you daft?"

Amber shrugged

"It's no more daft than the fact that at the time the movie supposedly took place, most of Port Royal would have been underwater. Will and Elizabeth would have had to be amphibious. But since the earthquake doesn't seemed to have affected the fictional Port Royal, the French could very well have invaded; England was at war with France at the time, around seventeen eighty-nine. And though most of the attacks on British holdings in the area were done by hired privateers, the French would have taken a city if they could."

"If you say so. But why did Will and Elizabeth go in search of Jack? Surely they know he wouldn't want to help"

"Ah, but you're forgetting how resourceful those two can be." Amber said, once more slipping into Jack Sparrows mannerisms. "Also, it doesn't hurt to have an ace up your sleeve." She finished.

"A way to persuade Jack?" Racheal asked in disbelief.

"One might say that." Amber replied cryptically, before continuing with the story.

--------------------------

Jack regarded Will and Elizabeth for a moment, wondering what he was going to do with them. They had gone out of their way to find him, probably in some misguided preconception that Jack would be willing to help them in some damn fool attempt to retake their home. The only problem was, Jack was no hero, and made no pretense to being one.

He was a pirate, and pirates didn't live very long if they got romantic notions of daring do. The question was, how to break it to them; they were honest people, and like any honest person, they expected everyone around them to act on the same moral principals as they did. Unfortunately, they invariably became judgmental when you proved them wrong. Not that he should care really, but it was good to have honest friends in high places. Not so high any more, but they were resourceful, and if anybody was stupid enough to take on the French armada single handedly, it was Will. Except, Will and Elizabeth were just lucky enough to win.

"So The French 'ave taken Port Royal, fancy that." He said with an odd flourish of his hand.

"Bloody frogs!" Growled Louis, who had recently come up from below decks and was splicing a bit of line nearby. His exclamation made Jack smile; Louis was French.

"Jack, you have to help us." Elizabeth said desperately.

"Help, I can give, but," and at this he held up a finger to quell any outbursts of gratitude. "but, I can't sail in cannons roaring, and drive the frogs out by the mere sight of me, in fact I won't be doin' anything of the kind." He told them bluntly. Their faces fell and Will got a stubborn look in his eye.

"Damn you Jack! You're a better man than this, I know it!" Will told him angrily. Jack rested his hand casually on his cutlass once more.

"Whatever grand illusions you have about me boy, you better put out of your head now. I am a pirate, not a good man, and if I were a good man I would not be a pirate, savvy? I will gladly help you find a new home and get you started on your feet again, hell you could even stay on the Pearl if you wanted; but I will not throw me life away in a lost cause." Jack told them.

"But it's not a lost cause Jack, Norrington was able to pull out his ships before the fort was overrun; he's hiding now, and awaits only my word to attack." Elizabeth told him defiantly.

"Wait just a moment." Jack said, confused. He pointed a finger at Elizabeth. "Awaits _your _order?" _when had that happened?_ "What 'appened to the governor?" he asked them. They both suddenly seemed very quiet, and the heavy silence seemed to suck the warmth out of the morning air.

"My father is dead." Elizabeth quietly informed the deck planks at her feet. Will put a comforting arm around her.

"The governor was killed during the battle." Will told Jack. "They came at night, at first it was only one ship, and Commodore Norrington took the Dauntless and the Queens Rose out to deal with it offshore; no sooner had they engaged the first ship, than two more crossed round the cliff. The Dauntless and the Queens Rose tried to turn back to help, but they were caught in the crossfire. Norrington had no choice but to withdraw." Will finished, as if defending the Commodores decision to retreat.

"And the bloody right choice it was. When a man's outmaneuvered that badly, best count your blessings that you got away with your hide in one piece." Jack told them blandly. "What I can't figure is why you would need me help in the first place."

"We need your reputation." Elizabeth said, regaining her voice and commanding orientation. "The Black Pearl was a true terror for close to ten years, and she still has a reputation. If you sailed into the harbor the French would be so scared they wouldn't know what to do with themselves, leaving them wide open for Norrington's surprise attack."

"And if they aren't scared spit less, the Pearl will be a sitting target for all those lovely little cannons on the fort walls." Jack told them darkly "Apologies if I seem a bit precipitous, but I fail to see were I benefit from this whole arrangement."

"I can make you a licensed privateer for the crown. Just think, you can sail openly into British controlled harbors, and you wouldn't have to worry about being hung by Britain any more." Elizabeth told him.

"The answers still no, love." He told her. Her jaw clenched and she got a mulish look in her eyes.

"Very well then, I call a vote. According the pirates code all decisions can be cast to a vote, except during a battle." she said loudly. Heads perked up from their work all over the deck, and Louis scurried down below, presumably to tell the rest of the crew.

"Bloody hell! What is it with you and that code? You're not even a pirate, and you probably know it better than I do!" he said, finally losing his patience, he'd had it up to here with women walking all over him. He was about to tell her to put an end to this foolishness when he noticed that Louis had returned, and behind him, the entire crew.

It was then he realized that he was trapped; he couldn't stop a vote without risking mutiny. The pirate's code centered around the basic principal that a man should always have a say in his life, every crew member had a right to vote about major decisions. Even if Elizabeth wasn't a pirate, and technically didn't have the right to call for a vote, the crew would want the vote anyway.

He consoled himself with the fact that his crew would probably think the idea just as foolish as he did; with any luck the vote would put an end to miss Swann's foolish notion that he could be persuaded to help.

"Gentlemen… and ladies," Jack started to the crew, making a gesture towards Anna-Maria as he said ladies. "Miss Swann has a proposition for us. I trust you all to listen to her opinions carefully and let her know exactly how you feel about them…"

Jack continued to expound on the matter, carrying on to a point that Elizabeth began to become impatient. Will had already lost interest and was carefully examining the crew, as if to tally how much damage they could inflict upon the French navy.

The Black Pearl was a large ship, and had an accordingly large crew; over two hundred men. Some of them, he knew from his first adventures with Jack; Cotton and his parrot, Marty the dwarf, Anna-Maria, Gibbs, and several others. Unfortunately there were faces missing from that first adventure as well, he did not see old Henry, or Brascon, and Eric Crast, the youngest aboard during the time they were sailing for isle de muerta, was missing as well.

Will found that he was sad at not seeing those familiar faces, even if they were pirates; life was cruel, and there was no changing that. He couldn't help but feel he was making it even worse by trying to convince them to go into a battle were surely there would be some casualties no matter how well planned the battle. Of course they were pirates, and as such were used to such deaths, but the fight was not theirs.

Elizabeth meanwhile, had finally, after a very thorough, if not entirely flattering introduction by Jack, begun her speech to the crew. She had told them of the situation in Port Royal, her plan to take it back, and the benefits they would receive if they helped her.

Not for the first time she cursed being born a woman, it was bad enough the things she had to endure wearing, but rarely would anybody take a woman seriously, especially a pregnant woman. She just hoped that these pirates were different; they had listened to her once, after all.

"So, if you sail to the aid of Port Royal, you will be greatly rewarded. Not only will I license you as privateers for the crown, but also you will have an automatic claim to the spoils of at least one of the French ships, possibly more. Furthermore, upon Port Royals' restoration, you will be granted the rights of a ship of the fleet, at least in Caribbean waters." She told them strongly, speaking loudly enough to be heard from bow to stern, coming to the end of her speech.

"Now for the vote." Jack said quietly to Anamaria, who was the Bosun.

"Show of hands!" Anamaria shouted at the top of her voice. "For?" her eyes moved over the deck, counting the good percentage of the crew who had raised their hands before raising her own in favor.

"Against?" she called. Considerably fewer hands were raised. Behind her, Anamaria heard Jack curse.

"Bloody buggering mules!" he exclaimed.

Elizabeth smiled triumphantly; she had the Pearls help! In truth, she had not expected it; already she had tried three other ships, including the Morning Star, whose captain owed her a favor. Even though Morgan had been amenable to the idea, her crew had not; they had already tangled with Port Royal in the past. In fact, they had been responsible for the death of the previous governor, directly resulting in her father being appointed to the position.

But now, she had the pirate ship most suited to the plan. She had at first been loath to seek out Jack, but after three refusals she was given no other choice. She had come here fully expecting to find refusal yet again, and after would have returned to try and retake her home without a pirate ship. But here she had the Black Pearl, a ship that people only spoke of in hushed voices. From New England to Spain, and even Italy, the Pearls name inspired fear, even though she was now captained by an entirely different man.

The vote over, and the decision made, the crew dispersed, going back to their tasks. She was once again alone save for Will, Jack, and Anamaria. She was standing near the rail, looking over the rest of the ship. Elizabeth had never really had a chance to look at the Pearl in an appreciating light, as previously she had always viewed it with suppressed terror; the walking dead will do that to a person.

Now though, she had a chance to appreciate the beauty of the ship, the smooth curves, the billowing sails, and the geometry of the rigging; all of it designed for speed and power. She could see why Jack had gone to the lengths he had to get her back.

At the same time Jack began to see Miss Swann in a new light; she was tough as nails, and willing to do whatever it took to accomplish her goals. Jack had only begun to measure the depth of her strength during their first encounter, then he told her that they were peas in a pod, and they had reached an understanding of sorts. Neither trusted the other, and that lay the foundation for the mutual respect they now shared. She was not an honest person, she would like to be, but she understood the world too well.

She also understood Jack too well for his tastes.

Anamaria chuckled were she stood at the helm.

"It would have saved your pride if you had just agreed at the start." She told him

"I think not, I was sunk either way." He said quietly "after all, there's not a man or woman on the crew who would pass up a chance to poke fun at the navy." Having the same rights as a ship of the fleet was doing exactly that, too. Jack had been tempted to change his position on the matter after he thought of Norrington's face when the Pearl pulled up to the dock right next to his ship and Norrington being unable to do anything about it.

"So when is Bill going to come out of hiding?" Anamaria asked him very quietly, with a significant glance at Will and Elizabeth, who were standing close together and looking out over the open water, talking quietly.

"Give him time. The last Bill saw of the kid, he was five." He told her, his voice murmuring, so that it was barely audible above the sea. She snorted in laughter.

"Yeah, and the last the kid saw of Bill, he was dead." She retorted, still speaking in a barely audible voice. The wind was picking up, and the sails stretched and the rigging creaked as they picked up speed, still bound for Port Royal.

Will and Elizabeth were still standing watching the pink and violet light tint on the water as the sun climbed its way into the sky, and Jack was beginning to find it somewhat nauseating; true love and lust were all very good, but Jack would thank them not to be so damn picturesque.

"All right loves, I'll not have my Pearl being a pleasure yacht, it's to work with you Will. A few of the cannons need some patching up, so go and see what you can do with them, that's a good lad." He told them roughly, Will gave him a slightly startled look before complying and moving down through the hatch into the main hold.

"What about me?" Elizabeth asked with a tilt to her chin.

"You… you just try not to sick up on the windward side, will you love?" he asked her, politely as he could. Instead of being quieted, she looked affronted. Jack was trying to think of what he had done, when Anamaria came to his rescue.

"I expect she can take a watch at the bow, right captain?" she suggested.

"Bow?" Jack asked puzzled. Anamaria elbowed him in the side. "Oh, right bow." He said, pretending to catch on. He turned to Elizabeth. "Yes. Miss Swann, go tell Tom that you are to take bow watch for a spell."

Though her eyes were still narrow, Elizabeth nodded and moved off towards the front of the ship, moving with a stately grace that seemed odd on her heavily pregnant form. Jack was still not sure what that had been about, but he was glad he had avoided at least one slap that day.

Jack barely noticed when a spirit suddenly became visible, walking straight out of the main mast. This one was Cemeille. She ghosted her way to the stern, walking up the steps to the poop deck, even though her feet were a good foot from the ground.

"I thought you said there where no Aes Sedai here?" she asked him accusingly "I have seen at least three woman who would match the description here today. It is good that you keep one; that Miss Swann, she will make a good windfinder." Jack tried to puzzle out what she had said; he could understand the words but not her meaning. What the bloody blazes was an Aes Sedai? She had still failed to sufficiently describe the term to him. And why would Elizabeth make a good wind finder? Jack decided he would probably never understand fully.

"And why do you still persist in being a sail master? Is it not bad luck for a man to command a vessel? Those other vessels are sensibly captained by women, why not this one?" She asked him curiously, and before he had a chance to reply she turned to Anamaria.

"You would make a good sail mistress, you should take command, you could make him master of the swords so his pride would not be so wounded, but something should be done before bad luck falls upon this ship." She told them matter of factly. Anamaria got an amused glint in her eyes, and stroked her chin thoughtfully, as if considering the idea.

"Well he does owe me a ship." She said playfully.

"I said I'd get you another one. You can have one of those French lovelies if you want, but the Pearl is mine, and no one, not even a ghost, is going to tell me I can't have her." He said half in amusement and half dead seriousness. To Cemeille he said

"I'll not have you inciting mutiny, any more of that nonsense out of you and I'll have you exorcised."

The ghost held up her hands in a defensive motion

"I meant nothing by it. Obviously the times have changed since my death, but it has all become so strange. I thought surely the Aes Sedai would hold the world in their fist forever, but now they are but a whisper on the winds." She said apologetically.

"Be easy love. I understand how a world can change." He told her, not so much as a way to comfort her, but more because there was nothing else he could say. She gazed at him pensively, her transparent eyes unreadable. Jack thought she was going to turn and be about her way, but instead she spoke up again, this time tentatively.

"Captain, I know that the gift of passage has not yet been repaid; do you know of any manner in which I can lift my debt?" Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise, the phrasing was strange, but unless he completely misunderstood, she wanted to work for her trip aboard the Pearl. She was the first of the stowaways to ask that. The problem was, how the blazes was he supposed to put a ghost to work? Their effect on anything with mass was minimal, they could lift small trinkets, but that was about it.

He looked skyward, considering. _What could you do with a ghost? _He expected to come up empty, but when he thought about it, his mind came up with many creative ideas.

"How much work are you willing to do lass?" he asked her.

"What I can." She replied earnestly.

"Well then, I think I migh' have a few ideas." he told her, and put his arm just around her shoulders, careful not to touch her lest he put his hand through her vaporous form.

------------------------------

Racheal laughed.

"Oh, I can only imagine what Jack might have in store."

Amber nodded vaguely, still in the grip of the story.

"Yes… but it's Will you should be imagining now."

"Why? Does he finally meet his father?" Racheal asked in a curious tone.

"Not yet." She said, and the story continued.

------------------------------

Will moved about the gun deck, slouching over to examine the Pearls many cannons. Nearby a bluish gray cat peered through the gloom with luminous green eyes. It watched him silently as he went about the task that Jack had assigned to him.

Will was no stranger to work, but still he felt slightly miffed that Jack had sent him to his chores so soon after embarking, so he grumbled a bit as moved from cannon to cannon, checking them for signs of wear, fixing what he could, and cataloging those that would need further work later.

Many of them just needed a bit of cleaning, as detritus from battle was beginning to collect in the barrels. So he took up the arduous task of reaching down and scraping out what he could; most times it was a black sooty paste that resulted from gunpowder mixing with salt spray, but at least once he found the charred remains of a rat, or at least he thought it was a rat, it was hard to tell. (Will being a stranger to the way of gunnery, did not realize that there was a special tool designed for exactly that, after all one must reflect upon the wisdom of putting your arm inside something that's designed to explode spectacularly)

So when he reached down the barrel of his fifteenth cannon and felt a snake like tail, he thought to find another dead rodent. So he gave it a tug to dislodge the thing.

With a mighty squeak, a large writhing mass of fur came flying out. A _very _large writhing mass of fur. The rat that he held by the tail was at least the size of a small dog. It wiggled about, swinging around and trying to take a chunk out of Will's hand. Will was saved from a rather nasty bite by the things size; it couldn't haul its mass up its own tale to get at his hand.

Suddenly, it stopped; it twisted around and fixed him with a beady stare. Will almost dropped it then, because its glare came from blood red eyes.

"Unhand me, you scaborous fiend!" it growled at him. Will yet again almost dropped the thing; it wasn't just that the rat had talked, but it had _growled._ Rats were not supposed to growl.

Before Will could process this information, a laugh sounded from the gloom:

"Ha ha ha! I have you now Rivsatim!"

Several things happened at once then.

The first was the fact that the gray cat was pouncing at him; up close it was much bigger than it had seemed.

The second was that the rat had finally managed to take a bite out of his hand, right on the webbing between his thumb and fore finger.

The third thing was more of a sensation really; he felt overwhelming pain, not just from the bite, but from the cat as it clawed its way up and over his face.

This time he really did drop the rat's tail, but it was too late, it climbed his arm before it too was clawing its way around his body in a painful fashion.

All the while the two animals seemed to be talking, well, shouting seemed to be more the term, but that was beside the point.

"Aiiie! Get away from me, you crazed feline!"

"Never! Not till the sun has burnt out and the moon fallen to earth!"

"You, Scaborous fiend, help me!" curiously enough, the last seemed to be directed at Will. Will was having problems of his own however, namely trying to divest himself of two insane hell spawn.

His dilemma was solved shortly, as the cat finally caught hold of the rat's tail. The rat screamed and broke away, but not before the cat had taken a good two inches off of the rat's tail.

"Curse you Mistlemyr! I'll get you for this!" it shouted, before launching itself back into the shadows.

"Blast and damn!" the cat cursed, leaping to the ground and peering into the gloom. The rat, Rivsatim, unless Will missed his guess, had already disappeared. The cat sat down at Will's feet and began grooming itself as if nothing had happened.

After it had soothed its wounded pride sufficiently, it turned its great green eyes to Will.

"We'll get him next time, eh mate?" said Mistlemyr the cat.

"We?" Will asked, finally finding his voice. The entire experience had left him slightly light headed, and he would wonder if he was dreaming, except for the massive amounts of pain coursing through his body.

"Aye, we. You hold him like that, I'll get him next time for sure." It told him confidently.

"Ehh?" Will asked, not quite sure what to think; he wasn't particularly keen on the idea of another experience like that.

"Wait, I know what I'll do!" the cat exclaimed, and before Will had a chance to respond Mistlemyr twined around his ankles, rubbing its cheek against his calf.

"There, now you're my person. It'll be grand! I like to be fed nine times a day, I am never to be disturbed while napping, and if you're very good, I'll let you pet me. As a token of my goodwill, I'm going to give you this." It pushed the two inches of Rivsatim's still wiggling tail towards Will.

"A rat tail?" Will asked, puzzled. Mistlemyr sniffed, as if crying.

"I know, it breaks my heart, but I think you deserve it more than I." it said dramatically, as if it were making a great sacrifice; maybe it was, Will didn't know very much about talking cats.

Not wanting to hurt Misltemyr's feelings, Will picked up the tail. Seeing no ready place to toss the thing without the cat noticing, he put it hesitantly in his pocket, intending to throw it overboard when the cat wasn't around.

Mistlemyr looked at him oddly.

"Aren't you going to play with it?" it asked Will. Will thought fast, trying to come up with a way out of the situation that did not involve batting a severed rat tail around the gun deck.

"I'm saving it for later." He told the cat. It was a weak excuse Will knew, but it was the best he could come up with. Fortunately, Mistlemyr seemed to accept this.

Footsteps could be heard coming down the hatchway, and Mistlemyr disappeared into the shadows. Will turned towards the sound, expecting to see one of the crew. The darkness was deep though, and Will couldn't see who was approaching.

"Who's there?" he called out. The shadowy figure hesitated just out of the light from the open cannon port Will stood next to. Then suddenly it rushed at him.

"Will, it's me!" Will's long dead father exclaimed. Will collapsed in a dead faint.

Bill looked down at the form of his unconscious son.

"Well that worked." He muttered.

---------------------

AN: chapter three has been finished for a while now, but I was waiting for a more enthusiastic response. If I don't get some reader input soon, I am going to discontinue this story.

I have still not received the answers to my question from chapter two, so all you have to do is answer them in a review, and you can be a side character in my story. (sorry, no time travelers or Mary sues.)

To give you a hint, two of them are historical figures.


	4. Chapter 4

Here's chapter four ladies and gentlemen. In the interest of getting my message across I will once again say that I am willing to give a brief cameo role anyone who even halfway gets the following questions right.

1. What fiction/history/movie did Morgan Adams come from?

2. What fiction/history/movie did Emily come from?

3. What fiction/history/movie did Cemeille come from?

4. What fiction/history/movie did Mary Reed come from?

5. What fiction/history/movie did Granail come from?

(I give hints to all of them in chapters two and three)

If you do decide to guess, please submit a brief character description and name along with your answers so that I can write you're characters cameo appearance into my story. The character must be in keeping with the time period as well, so no time travelers (please note that the winner may not see their character appear in the very next chapter, but will be brought in at a logical location according to the characters descriptions. For instance, if your character is a tavern wench you will have to wait until the story reaches an inhabited island before you will see her.)

Also please do not expect too much back story, I cannot suddenly write in Elizabeth's long lost sister, or Jack's childhood sweetheart (in fact, no Mary Sues at all please)

So now that I'm done with that list of limitations I will say that I am willing to give more than one cameo appearance, in other words that means if you answer and get at least one of the answers right you can all be winners.

And finally, without further ado, I give you…

Chapter four

"Alright you two, it's time for you to take a watch." The first officer's voice interrupted the stories deep reverie. Amber and Racheal both stood immediately, and Amber shrugged a little as the wind blew through her sun warmed clothes.

Sara, at the first officer's side, consulted the clip board that had the order of watches on it.

"Lynn is to replace me as messenger, and Shotts, you're to take the helm." Sara told them, addressing the two by their last names.

Sara Brownstein, the instructor's older daughter, was one of their friends, so it was a bit odd that she was addressing them by their last names, but then at the moment, Sara was in quite a bit of trouble for giving Joe a black eye. Joe was another of the students on the trip, and more often than not he said things that were not entirely appropriate. This time, having given Sara the nickname 'Brute' he got himself in further than he could swim; Sara had decked him. Joe really wasn't that upset, and was now going around calling himself 'the one eyed princess' but the teachers and regular crew couldn't just let it slide.

"Aye." Racheal and Amber confirmed before moving back to the stern to take their respective watches. Without even conferring, the two switched jobs, Amber taking the tiller, and Rachel taking a seat on the transom. Racheal disliked steering the larger ships, but Amber loved it, so it had become customary. Nobody remarked about it, so it all worked out.

Amber grinned, guiding the Lady as she ploughed through the water. Without taking her eyes off of the horizon she spoke to Racheal.

"Shall I continue the story?" she asked. Racheal grinned.

"Are you kidding? I want to know what happens with Will when he wakes up."

-----------------------------

When Will awoke, he found himself to be in a somewhat different place than he last remembered being. Elizabeth was at his side, Jack was off to one side, being Jack, and his father was looking out the stern castle windows. He quietly raised himself to his elbows and found his progress impeded by a mass of Blue-gray fur. Mistlemyr raised her head, blinking her green eyes once, then shook her head, and settling back on Will's chest. Will decided it would be easier just to stay lying down.

"That's a strange cat you've got there, Will. He almost bit 'Lizbeth when she came down to find the commotion."

"Excuse me?" Mistlemyr raised her head to glare at Bootstrap "I am very clearly a woman! Now, if you don't mind, I don't like to be disturbed while I'm napping." She gave him a disgruntled look before settling back yet again.

Nearby, Elizabeth looked torn between scolding Bootstrap or greeting her father in-law. Finally she broke, and scolded him.

"Well, there wouldn't have been a commotion if you hadn't surprised him like that!" she said.

"That's probably true, but I thought if I just got it over with quick like, it would be easier." Bill said with a shrug.

"Well you thought wrong. You're lucky you didn't scare him to death."

Will tried vaguely to comprehend what was going on, and then thought better of it. In fact he wondered if it would be entirely inappropriate to pass out again, but then decided that he would never live it down if he passed out twice in one day.

Once more he tried to get up, and again Mistlemyr tried to impede his progress. This time though, Will had a slightly better grasp of his cognitive functions and moved her off of his chest. She gave him a reproachful look before jumping off the bed and sauntering across the room to curl up in one of the few chairs onboard.

Will took stock of his surroundings; he was apparently in the captain's quarters, or rather, Jack's quarter's. It made sense; it was the only place onboard that had an actual bed instead of a hammock. And it had the added bonus of privacy; not that it seemed very private at the moment, however.

His wife and his father were currently arguing, and when all was said and done, two people arguing on a ship, no matter how spacious, is going to make it seem crowded. The fact that they were arguing right over the top of him didn't help.

Jack, wisely, was sitting across the room from the family reunion, with his feet propped up on a table and a jeweled goblet in his hand. The goblet alone was a king's ransom, and Will spied many other trinkets of equal value lying carelessly about. Apparently fate had been kind to Sparrow.

Will tried to edge into the argument between Elizabeth and his father.

"Excuse me?" Will waved a hand between the two to try and catch their attention. "Would someone mind explaining what's going on?" he asked politely. Miraculously, they both turned to face him.

"Aye?"

"Yes Will?"

"It's nothing really; I just thought it would be nice if someone were to explain to me why and how my father appears to be standing here arguing with you when, last I checked, he died over ten years ago."

"Oh." Elizabeth said.

"Ah, well. That's a tricky subject, now isn't it? Truth is I'm still not quite sure how that happened. It has something to do with this, though." Bootstrap answered, showing them the black jewel on his brow.

Jack chose then to interject, setting his goblet down on the table and rising from his seat with a slight flourish of his wrists.

"That would be were I come in then. Consider him your combined marriage, house warming, baby shower, and birthday present, from now until the day I die." He told a speechless Will, swirling his fingers in the air a bit.

Will stared for a moment.

"_You _did this?" He asked incredulously. Jack looked slightly amused.

"What? Don't believe I could bring back the dead if I set me mind to it?" he asked. Will shook his head

"It's not that, it's jus-" Will didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. The ghostly specter that was Cemeille burst into the room, not even bothering with the hatchway, but coming up at an angle through the floor.

"Sail Master! I did as you instructed, and scouted out over the water looking for ships bearing the three barred flag you described to me, and there are two of them not two leagues ahead." She said in a brusque and slightly excited tone.

"Is that so." Jack stated more than asked, accompanying this with a casual flick of his fingers. Will, however, looked from Cemeille, to his father, and then back again. It was odd, when actually confronted with a ghost, it did not seem to irk him as much as the abstract concept of his father coming back from the dead. Nonetheless, he wondered what other surprises awaited him on his stay aboard the Pearl.

"And how many guns did they have?" Jack asked the specter casually.

"From the way you have described things, not many. They seemed to be more overcrowded than anything, men in uniforms mostly." She told him.

"That will be the reinforcements then. Now, did you see anything else of note?" he asked her.

"There was one other thing that seemed odd, a man and a woman, both dressed in an abundance of lace and brocades. I think I am right in guessing that they were nobles, for some things will never change. I'm afraid, though, that the woman saw me when she was looking down into the water. She fainted I think, but I did not stay long after that." Cemeille said with the faintest hints of a grin.

"Oh good then." Jack said to himself. He may not have liked the idea of saving Port Royal, and he still didn't. But if he was going to do this, he was going to do it his way. He turned to the others; "ladies, gentlemen, and assorted beings of the afterlife, if you would accompany me topside, I will show you how to catch a frog."

"_A_ frog?" Elizabeth said in a slightly disapproving tone "Jack, it's not just one Frenchman we're talking about here, it's two French ships of war, if I caught your meaning correctly; and they're over two leagues in front of us, how do you even think to catch them?" she asked him, very quickly picking up on the conversation between him and the ghostly woman.

"We'll catch them in the fog, of course." Jack explained simply. Will looked out the stern windows; it was a bright cloudless noon outside.

"What fog?" he asked the captain disparagingly

"Ghosts and ghouls aren't the only tricks I have up me sleeve mate." Jack said as he swaggered across the room to the hatch. He opened it and poked his head out over the main deck, looking around approvingly for a moment before finding the person he was searching for.

"Mister Chen!" he shouted.

"Aye sir?" the young Asian man replied

"Go down below and get her breathing." Jack told him. The younger fellow looked slightly apprehensive, but went off to do it without delay.

By this time Jack was all the way out onto the deck and was climbing the narrow staircase to the helm with Will and Elizabeth not far behind. Bootstrap followed them out but remained on the main deck. Jack took the wheel from Cullins and began shouting orders.

"Let out the sails, raise the gib and the stais'l'. I want to bring us up to speed." He called out, and the crew began to scurry to accomplish the orders. Soon, the Pearl, which had been clipping along at a goodly pace already, began racing over the water as if some unknown force pushed her along. The rigging verily hummed with the wind, and Jack enjoyed the sensation of the air rushing over his cheeks

"Now, watch." Jack told the couple behind him, Elizabeth waited knowingly; she remembered her trip on the Pearl well, but Will still seemed puzzled. Sure enough, a creeping mist began swirling up from the very planking, seemingly unaffected by the cutting wind that pushed them forward. It wasn't long before bilious amounts of fog spread out to either side and trailed along her wake so that the Black Pearl appeared to be a great bird, a roc of legends, skimming just over the oceans surface.

When the fog increased to a point that Jack could no longer see the front of the Pearl, he took out his compass and flicked it open, guiding her were he wanted her to go using only a small box with a needle. He didn't even bother looking at the main compass standing on the deck in the binnacle; it wouldn't tell him were he needed to go. In this case he needed to come up on the French ships at just the right point, and for that kind of precision, he needed his compass.

"Make ready to attack! Madding, get your crew below and tend to the guns. We'll board the one quietly in the fog, and then blast the other out of the water using their own ship." Jack shouted. Will wondered briefly how Jack meant to attack them when he couldn't even see the ships, but then decided not to voice his concerns; he could only assume Jack knew what he was doing.

Jack grinned wolfishly; he was planning to take the first one without ever making use of the cannons. Step one was intimidation; the fog would already be working on that; but he wanted to see how the French would cope with a few ireful spirits. Well, really only one of them had any sort of problems with the French, and even that one had been caught by the British, but that was beside the point. Even if they weren't entirely ireful, they would still scare the pants off of those Frenchman.

"Cemeille!" he called out, and jumped back slightly as she rose right up through the deck at his feet. She met his gaze blankly, waiting patiently for him to say something.

"Remember our discussion about tactical advantage?" he asked. She nodded.

"Good. I am putting you in charge of getting your three spectral companions and working out a plan of attack, as it were. We'll be attacking the leftmost one first." He said pointing through the fog. She nodded.

"It will be as you say, Sail Master." She replied, and sank back through the deck.

"How _did_ you get a ghost in your crew, Jack?" Will asked curiously.

"I got them the same way I found your father and your new cat, only they were accidental." Jack said with a scowl as he remembered discovering his stowaways after his departure from hell. But then he brightened as he remembered how useful Cemeille had proven herself already.

Meanwhile he could almost sense the Pearl drawing closer to the French ship. He was coming up on the two ships from their starboard side, which meant he was bringing the Pearl up on the outside of the two ship formation.

"Quiet on deck!" he called to his crew in a voice not quite as loud as he normally used when shouting orders, but loud enough to carry to the bow, and not much further, he hoped.

His crew fell silent, and the only sounds to be heard was the creaking of the rigging and the quiet clanking of weapons being tended to.

Anamaria walked quietly up to were they stood at the helm, her booted feet not making a sound. Her arms were laden with all manner of destructive tools. Without a word she began handing them to Will and Elizabeth. Will received a brace of pistols, two throwing axes, and a long bladed cutlass. To Elizabeth, however, she gave the majority of the weapons, most of them ranged.

"Battle is no place for a pregnant woman." Anamaria whispered to her. "But there's no place else to go, so you'd best hope you don't let any of them get near you, or that child of yours may never be born."

Elizabeth looked slightly taken back at the implication that she could not take care of herself, but quickly recognized the wisdom in Anamaria's words. She nodded to signal that she understood, and then began arraying the guns over her person till she veritably bristled with armaments. The heavy bayonet she had received was held at her side, lacking anywhere on her body that it could be hung. It would be her first, and ultimately last line of defense, due to the heavy blade mounted on the barrel.

The tension in the air seemed to intensify by degrees the closer they drew to the French ship, and though they could not see it yet, they could almost smell it. Most of the crew stood ready at the port side, grappling hooks in hand, just waiting for the command to throw them. The waiting was the hardest part, even for the seasoned pirates, and for the younger crew, it felt as if they were going to snap at any moment.

Occasionally, in the past, one would snap; start singing or dancing, or they would just start twitching and writhing on the deck, and have to be taken below, but this did not happen that day. That afternoon, everyone waited silently, with grim faces and pounding hearts, waiting to see if this battle would be their last.

They waited for what seemed like hours, though in actuality it was only fifteen minutes, as the small hourglass near the watch bell could attest. They waited with baited breath, straining their eyes to see through the fog.

All things taken into account, the crew was doing remarkably well considering that the captain had not taken the time to brief them on the situation; they were content with what they could surmise from the orders Jack had given.

Wind rustled through tattered clothes and grimy hair as the pirates stood ready to attack. Then, suddenly, the great French Brig hove into view. The fog was so thick that the Pearl was nearly on top of it before it became visible, and the Pearl was still closing fast. They had almost passed the adjacent ship before the French could even blink in surprise.

"Let fly the hooks!" Jack yelled, shattering the thick silence of the fog.

In a flurry of motion the crew threw the hooks to the other boat. Most made it, and bit into the railing with a solid _thunk_, but a few missed and fell with useless splashes into the water.

The Pearl, under full sail, was still going though, and the grappling lines stretched tight as she tried to keep going. A few of the lines now linking the two ships snapped, but most held. With a shuddering groan, the Pearl was pulled backwards as the slower and heavier French vessel held her back, and several people on both ships stumbled. Will himself was jerked back onto the gunnel before he regained his footing.

Due to the two forces opposing one another, the Pearl and the other ship were drawn into a lazy but dizzying spiral in the water. Jack grinned again, this time with glee. Will stared in disbelief; Jack had done that intentionally!

"Draw your weapons and prepare to board!" Jack called out from the helm, following his own order and drawing his cutlass. Before leaping to the offense however, he threw a tether over the wheel, locking it to port so that the two ships would continue there slow ballet on the water.

The French had recovered from the surprise however, and were now armed. Already shots were being exchanged between the two crews and a few brave souls were leaping over the gunnels to board the French warship.

Soon the burning smell of sulfur filled the fog and the sound of metal on metal rang out through air. The French, caught by surprise, were ill armed and frightened, but the majority of the crew were still soldiers, and were trained accordingly. But with a little dirty fighting they could be dispatched easily. So though the pirates found themselves facing stronger opponents than usual, their situation was not impossible.

As long as they kept the frogs off balance they would be fine, but if Jack let them get the upper hand, his crew would be in trouble.

He turned to Elizabeth, who was crouching behind the gunnel using her bayonet to pick off any Frenchman that presented a target.

"Miss Swann, the duck foot if you please." He asked her. To his surprise she did not need a description of the strange gun, and simply handed Jack the eight barreled pistol without taking her eyes off of the enemy ship. Jack then stepped up to the gunnel, leaped over the small gap between the ships and landed on the French stern castle. Not even really bothering to aim, he pointed the duck foot and pulled the trigger, watching with satisfaction as several men fell.

He cast aside the now useless weapon and set about with his cutlass, soon finding himself parrying against a large man in a lieutenants uniform. Jack grinned nervously, more to make his opponent misjudge him than anything else, and then pretended to turn and try to run away. When the larger man raised his sword for a killing blow, Jack turned, and with the lightning quickness he was famous for, ran the lieutenant through. The man had a puzzled look on his face even as he fell to the deck, blood bubbling up between his lips.

Without another thought, Jack turned to face his next opponent; a wiry fellow with a pistol aimed straight for Jacks head.

A normal man might have frozen, but not Captain Jack Sparrow. Jack kept moving, ducking down and rolling even as the Frenchman pulled the trigger. There was a loud blast as the ball whizzed just centimeters over his head, knocking his hat off and singing his hair. Jack's roll knocked the mans feet out from under him, and as Jack sprung up from the roll he slashed at the mans exposed belly, eviscerating him and then moving on, trying not to imagine how much the man would suffer before he died.

Around him, the pirates were fighting the French sailors with an efficiency that bordered on the ruthless, using every trick in their considerable repertoire to gain the upper hand.

Jack was forced to step around a pair of combatants wrestling on the deck, thoughtfully kicking the man Cullins was wrestling with as the two rolled by. Down on the main deck Jack could see Anamaria, who was leading a small band of pirates as she viciously slashed her way to the hatch that would lead down to the gun deck.

He soon pushed Ana from his mind however; as he noticed that Chen was in need of a bit of rescuing. The young man was backed up against the gunnel by a stocky looking sailor, and wasn't accounting for himself very well at all. Even as Jack watched, the old cutlass Chen had been given went flying, sent there buy a skillful parry by the French sailor. That didn't seem to be the end of it though; the Frenchman said something that Jack couldn't quite make out, but Chen certainly heard.

Chen's eyes glinted and his face hardened, and one minute the Frenchman was standing, getting ready to finish the boy off, and then he was on the deck, his own sword pinned through his eye. At this point Jack was close enough that he could hear Chen's next words:

"Don't call me tiny." Jack began to think he should have listened to the young man when he had said he didn't need a sword. Time enough for that later; Jack had only enough time to fetch his hat before he was once again beset by an opponent.

This time the enemy was an officer that seemed more decoration than anything else. The man seemed very frail, and wore all the trimmings; the medals, the lace, even a large plume on the hat. He looked as if he should never have been let away from home. The man was tougher than he looked, however, and he was wicked fast to boot.

Jack circled left, looking for an opening, and the man countered easily. Jack feinted to the right, and then attempted to strike at the officers left. He didn't buy the feint and met Jacks sword smoothly. Jack slid out of that attack and lunged, forcing the man to give up ground. He was not moved lightly though, and Jack narrowly avoided a riposte that would have cost him an eye, taking a nick on the scalp instead. They both paused for a moment, noting the significance of first drawn blood.

"This is bloody ridiculous!" Jack muttered under his breath. He was being beaten by a strutting tin soldier. He looked around, searching for an advantage that would allow him to beat the officer. He was looking for a way to cheat; he knew that if he followed rules the enemy knew for to long, they would beat him, so it was best to change the rules at regular intervals. So Jack changed the rules.

"If you lay down your weapon now, I swear on pain of death I won't tell your crewmates that you're a woman." Jack said as an insult, meant to make the officer angry. He wasn't even sure that the officer could speak English, but it was worth a shot. To Jacks immense surprise, however, a flicker of indecision crossed the officer's face.

The officer increased her attacks, apparently determined to keep her secret by silencing him.

'_Well, I wanted to change the rules.'_ Jack thought as he backed up across the deck, retreating from the onslaught of slashes and thrusts. Jack very likely would have died there by the hands of the furious woman, if not for some ignorant soul in the rigging slashing about and sending the entire topgallant billowing to the deck.2 Some of the sail was still tangled up in the rigging, so the sail fell across the deck, neatly curtaining the stern from the bow.

Later Jack would think back and wonder at his luck that the yard arm fell right in between him and the lady officer, and missed killing him, but right then, Jack was only worried about getting away.

Jack scurried off before the woman posing as a man could decide whether or not she wanted to cut through the sail cloth to get him.

-----------Below decks----------

Anamaria rushed down the main hatch and onto the gun deck of the French ship, hurrying to get to their cannons before they could use them and give away the situation to the second ship. Behind her, Todd and Sully had there weapons drawn.

She peered into the gloom, looking as far as she could down the line of cannons, watching for signs of activity. The gun deck was small and cramped, and it didn't even have that many cannons. Most of the gun ports were closed, making the illumination even worse than it might be otherwise.

Anamaria gestured to one of the starboard cannons with an open port; it was pulled all the way back, as if it were in the process of being loaded. It probably was too; Anamaria moved in to investigate, the two men at her back following cautiously.

Sure enough, as soon as the three approached it, five men sprang up. Moving with practiced grace and agility, Anamaria ducked as one of the frogs swung clumsily at her head. She drew her pistol and fired it into the gut of the nearest one. He dropped like a stone, and the other four drew back.

"Alright you filthy bottom fish, drop yer weapons and be quiet like nice little frogs." She waved her pistol threateningly at the nearest one, who didn't have a hole in his gut… yet.

One of the frogs, the youngest of the group it appeared, lunged forward at Sully, He parried easily, sending the young lad to the floor.

"I take that as a 'no' then." Anamaria said before launching into the fray once again. Lacking the time to reload the pistol, but not wanting to toss it aside, she clubbed a man over the head with it before tucking it back into her belt. The man looked a little dazed but remained standing.

Fighting was difficult, though; the quarters were cramped and it was four against three. Anamaria found herself facing off against the largest in the group; she sneered in disgust, the man was a coward. Sully and Todd were facing off with two of the men as well. The youngest one, the one that Sully had sent to the ground, scurried away instead of helping his mates.

Both parties were hampered by the low ceiling, and Todd, taller than most by at least a head, was being quickly out maneuvered by his shorter opponent. Sully grew tired of trying to swing a cutlass were there wasn't room to, and so tossed it aside, drawing a dagger from his boot and rushing the man he was fighting. They tumbled away into the darkness, and Anamaria lost track of them; besides, she had problems of her own to worry about.

The man she was facing didn't even bother to draw his cutlass, and instead began swinging at her with fists the size of hams. She ducked and dodged, weaving about him like a crazed bumblebee in her attempts to stay out of his reach.

She had no time to draw another weapon, and so was forced to use her cutlass; hardly a weapon suited for below deck fighting. She thrust forward with the sword in an unfamiliar motion, she felt ridiculous even as she nicked the man in the arm. The large fellow didn't even seem to notice, and she cursed as she tried to slash with it and found her progress impeded by a support beam.

Nearby, she noticed that Todd was nearly finished off. Even as she ducked under a swing aimed at her head, her fellow pirate fell to the deck, clutching a knife in his throat. '_Damn! He was a good man.' _She thought. Now the fight was four to two, not good odds, even if one of the Frenchmen wasn't fighting.

The afore mentioned was currently busy next to the cannon, attempting to load it by himself. It would take him awhile, she knew, but she would have to hurry and finish off her current fight if she was to stop him in time.

As if fate was mocking her, the man who had killed Todd approached her as well, attempting to trap her between himself and the large man. Her heart raced as she looked for a way to resolve the situation with her skin intact.

In a bold and reckless move, she rushed towards the knifeman at full speed, slipping past him at the last crucial moment and pushing him along into a bone crunching blow from the first man. The knife man's head swung back at an odd angle as the larger man's fist connected, and he crumpled to the deck in a heap. Anamaria used the few precious seconds that gained her to draw her second pistol, and even as the knifeman fell, she had her gun aimed at the first mans heart. As it turned out, Anamaria had been correct about him, he was a coward. As soon as he saw the pistol he froze, putting his hands in the air in surrender.

It was too late for the man however, for Anamaria had not hesitated even a second, and even as he raised his hands in surrender, there was a reverberating blast from her pistol, and a blossom of red erupted from his chest. As he fell clutching his wound, he looked up at her with a betrayed expression.

"Sorry." She said half heartedly with a shrug.

She turned away from her fallen opponent with a practiced ease that comes from having spilled a lot of blood, not all of it honorably. Sully came limping out of the darkness, sparing only one sorrowful glance for Todd's fallen form.

Both she and Sully turned to the young man at the cannon, who was scrambling frantically to get it loaded, trying desperately to save his ship. Casually, Anamaria touched the point of her cutlass to the boy's throat, giving him a chance to surrender, if he wanted to. Unsurprisingly the boy stopped dead in his tracks, fear causing his body to freeze completely. Anamaria watched dispassionately as his spirit broke, and hope shattered to pieces within his eyes; he knew all was lost, his ships last chance had just been thwarted, and there was nothing to do know but lie down and surrender.

Anamaria, content that the situation was under control, turned in a small circle, surveying the gun deck in its entirety. She saw no other lurking shadows, only the bodies of the four men they had killed, and the silently weeping young man at her sword point.

"It looks like we'll be stayin' down here for the rest of the fight Sully, seeing as how we have a prisoner and what with the necessity of makin' sure no other wandering frog happens across the gun deck. Pity though, I was lookin' foreword to seein' if the Captain ever realized that the French officer he was fightin' was actually a woman." Anamaria said to Sully as she went about disarming the cannon that the boy had been so eager to load. Sully similarly disarmed the weeping prisoner, who he then bound and gagged.

Too late Anamaria wondered if she should have mentioned the Frenchwoman in front of one of her crew mates; she may be the enemy for today, but Ana had no personal quarrel with her. If the officer managed to survive the battle, there was a very good chance the pirates would release the prisoners after the entire Port Royal affair was over, and she may be able to go back to her career. But that would all be over if her secret got out.

Anamaria glanced at the boy, but he made no sign that he understood what she was saying or even heard her. He was probably not important enough nor high enough ranking to merit the kind of education officers received, if anyone on this ship spoke English it would be one of them. After all, you had to be able to issue surrendering conditions intelligibly, or so their logic ran.

Sully's curiosity was peaked however.

"Really? A woman you say? Which one was it?" he asked as he settled back, facing one of the two entrances onto the gun deck. Anamaria leaned back against one of the support beams facing the other entrance, before responding.

"She was the one with all the spangles. It was hard to tell, but I'm fairly sure I know what to look for by now." She said sarcastically. She paused for a moment, and then to make conversation, she said "There are a lot of them out there, you know, serving in the mercantile fleets and the various navies, but most men are so blind they don't see it."

"Hmm?" Sully sounded questionable but indicated that she should go on talking.

"It seems rare, I know, but that's because you only hear about the ones that get caught. Mary Reed to name a familiar example." She said condescendingly. He glanced over his shoulder, looking at her doubtfully.

"If you say so." He said, clearly not believing what she had told him.

Well, let him think that way if he wanted to, she was sure that the brass speckled officer up there would be thankful if more men did.

Due to the nature of sailing, the motion would actually be much more complex than a spiral, but I don't think the story needed me to go into the actual mechanics of the motion of the ship.

2 I'm not entirely sure this is possible, my sailing experience comes mostly from schooners, but I'm fairly certain that it would take a very determined idiot to cut all the lines supporting this sail. Nonetheless, that's what happens in the story.

--------------------------------

AN: well that was chapter four, but the battle is far from over. Let me know what you think of how I portrayed Jack, he only actually fought and killed one person in the entire movie so I feel like I'm on shaky ground writing him into a full blown battle.

I would still like to see some answers to the questions I posed in chapter two, as I mentioned above.


	5. Chapter 5

chapter five

"Amber, don't you think that with all the female characters you've introduced already, the French lady officer seems a bit overkill?" Racheal asked her friend. Amber paused in the story, looking a little lost and confused.

"Maybe, but I don't really think that I am creating this story per se, so much as simply telling it. If you think she's overkill, you'd have to ask her, because I certainly didn't know about her until after Jack insulted her." She said as if the realization had only just dawned on her.

The day was getting on, and as Amber steered the Lady on her course, a chilled afternoon breeze picked up, blowing strongly through the two girls hair. The wind spoke of faraway places and unknown adventures… whispered to them of stories untold.

Racheal pulled her coat tight around her, but turned her face into the wind with closed eyes, as if she were trying to see the lively zephyr and its unseen promises with her minds eye.

As she did so, Amber continued to tell the story, and this time, Racheal could actually _see_ it.

-------------------

Battle raged and blood ran, and the sea was aflame with a dark fog. Men were dieing aboard the two ships, their screams of pain mixing with the sharp ring of steal to form a grim clarion that lingered over the battle. Yet despite this awful cacophony of death, the third ship, alone in the fog, heard nothing. They sailed on, slightly wary of the dense and unnatural fog, but unaware of the peril their sister ship faced, and completely oblivious to their own eventual fate as well.

Among the Pearl's crew, things were going well; Elizabeth was unharmed and accounting for herself well, using the array of weapons given to her to methodically shoot down any Frenchman she saw that presented a clear enough target. Her husband, nearby, paced like a tiger, ready to dispatch anything that threatened his wife and unborn child.

Will's father, the infamous Bootstrap Bill, directed the Pearls defense from the main deck, fighting like a demon against any Frenchman foolish enough to attempt to board the Pearl. Startlingly, he felt that he could go on fighting forever, though he was well past the stage that the adrenaline would give him that feeling. Being dead was a truly unusual feeling, especially when he was dead and walking among the living, trying to pretend to himself that he was one of them. He shook off the eerie feeling this thought gave him, and turned his mind once again to the fight, doubling his efforts.

The Pearl's Captain, unlikely as it might seem, was not aboard his ship, but was instead aboard the French man of war, attempting to locate _its_ captain. Jack's progress was impeded however, by the fact that he was being chased fore and aft across the French ship by a crazed she-demon. Aside from this small inconvenience however, he thought things were going rather well.

The crewmembers of the Pearl had high morale, and were steadily advancing through the French ship, swarming through it like a plague of rats. Everything was going more or less according to Jack's plan… until something completely unexpected happened.

Nobody was ever quite clear what had happened next, though Jack could have been sure Anamaria's mission had been successful. If she had failed, surely the cannons would have gone off much sooner than they did.

Jack paused in his flight as the unmistakable roar of multiple cannons could be heard. The Pearl groaned as the grand ship took three cannonballs at point blank range when the French ships starboard cannons fired. Jack cursed as the sound reverberated through the fog, no doubt alerting the second French ship.

He had no time to wonder at whatever fate might have befallen Anamaria, he was making rapid calculations in his head. It was too soon, the Pearls crew could not take on a second ship as well. He had set the two ships spinning in case of just such an event, so that the second ship could not fire without the risk of hitting their own ship, but if it came close enough to hook them with grappling lines, the Pearl would be quite literally sunk.

The French crew, heartened by the sound of their own cannons, rallied themselves and began to fight with a will. The pirate crew, taken by surprise, and shocked by the sudden cannon fire, began to lose ground.

Jack finally spotted the captain, a tall man with a firm jaw, walking amongst the Frenchmen. Of his previous pursuer there was no sign.

Out of the fog the second ship loomed, and was forced to veer off sharply as the two careening combatants swung into their path. Emboldened by the sight of their sister ship, the diminished French crew doubled their efforts, fighting now as if against the devil himself.

"The captain! Kill their captain!" Jack yelled out, rallying his own crew with a pointed cutlass.

The French captain was similarly yelling and pointing towards Jack, and though Jack couldn't understand what he was saying, he got the gist of it. A few of the enemy crew broke off in their fights and began moving towards Jack, and Captain Sparrow got the distinct feeling that it wasn't safe to be himself right then.

Jack began backing away from his menacing pursuers, and though his crew fought mightily nearby, none of them could spare the effort to help him, largely because they too were fighting for there lives.

The heel of Jack's boot caught on a body of one of the dead sailors, and though Jack tried to stay upright by pin wheeling his arms about, he inevitably landed with a jarring thump. The three men advancing on him smirked, sure of their victory as Jack scooted backward on his rump, his feet scrabbling on the bloody deck.

Despite the direness of the situation, however, Jack did not despair, he still had his cutlass in his hand, his pistol in his belt, and his wits about him; and so long as he had those he could get out of anything.

"Come now mates, surely we can talk this out?" Jack asked, seriously doubting that these three common sailors had any idea of what he was saying. His vocalization did serve to focus their collective attention on his face however.

Jack continued to scoot backwards until he was stopped by the large mainmast. A little ways towards the bow past that, Jack knew, was the fallen topgallant. That gave him an idea.

Jack wrapped the arm that was not holding his cutlass around the maintop's'l sail halyard, a line as thick as his wrist that was used to hoist the yardarm aloft, and used it as leverage to pull himself to his feet.

He raised his cutlass and pointed it at the three men, as if in an attempt to fend them off. Then, with all his might, he swung.

It was not at the men he lashed however, but at the halyard that he still had a grip on. Too late the men realized his true intentions.

The thick line parted, not easily, but it was cut nonetheless. Jack, holding onto the halyard, shot upwards at an unbelievable velocity, while at the same time the truck that held the yard to the mast broke and the entirety of the maintop's'l plummeted down to entangle the three men and several other people who were fighting in the mid-ship vicinity. As Jack was borne skyward he could not help the noises of surprise that escaped him. Needless to say this was the first time he had done this particular trick with an entire sail as the counterbalance, and so it was all he could do to hang on.

Jack looked up and noticed that the block that the halyard ran through was approaching all too quickly. Without the time to do anything else, he let go, trusting that his own acrobatic tendencies would see him through. The line flicked him through the air like the snapping end of a whip, catapulting him, thankfully, into the foremast shrouds, were he clung like a deranged spider.

"Today's just not me day is it?" he muttered to himself.

---------On the Pearl---------

"Load starboard cannons! On the next pass I want to fire everything we've got! We can't let them get close enough to use their grappling lines!" Bootstrap yelled over the roar of battle.

Considerably more Frenchman had made it onto the Pearl than before the second ship had arrived. Around his father, Will could see what pirates that were not otherwise engaged, struggle down to the gun deck to follow the order. It would be a while though, and the French ship was getting closer and closer on each scouting pass.

Behind Will, his beautiful Elizabeth was firing and reloading her bayonet with startling and almost frightening efficiency.

She had heard Jack's last orders before he disappeared into the rigging, and with each successive shot she was coming closer to getting the captain. The problem was that the rest of the French crew swarmed around him, protecting him, making it difficult to get a clear shot.

She reloaded once more, carefully clicking back the hammer and squinting down the barrel, waiting for the perfect shot.

She was unaware as several French soldiers swarmed up the steps, hoping to capture the Pearls helm, and thus end the wild zigzagging that was impeding their allies from coming to their aid. The soldiers were surprised to find that the helm was not even being manned, and that the only thing that stood in their way was a young man and a heavily pregnant woman.

They paused a moment to wonder what an expecting mother was doing on a pirate ship, and in that pause they lost the element of surprise against Will. Their mistake.

Fighting instinctively against the threat they posed to the two beings most precious to him, Will exploded into battle with the force of an erupting volcano. So furious was his attack that he had cut down one of the four soldiers before they even quite knew what was happening. The confusion did not last long, and soon Will found himself facing three trained French soldiers. His feet danced across the deck as he moved to meet every slash with a parry, and every opportunity with an attack of his own.

Elizabeth heard the sharp skittering sound of steel against steel, and it even registered distantly that Will was fighting, but she was concentrating her whole being into finding the perfect shot. If she let even the smallest thing distract her, the moment would come and go in a blink of the eye, and she would very likely never get another chance.

She curled her finger around the trigger, sensing a lull in the motion around the French captain. Then, even as Will fought to protect her, downing another of the soldiers with his flashing blade, she saw the shot.

Unhesitatingly, she pulled the trigger, absorbing the recoil into her shoulder and hardly noticing it, so intent was she on the path of the bullet. The heavy lead ball flew straight and true, and even as the captain motioned his crew forward to press the advantage, gesturing with his sword, the bullet took him straight in the head.

It was not pretty, and it was not romantic the way they say some men fall in battle, and though the French captain certainly looked as if he deserved a ballad worthy death, he did not receive one. The battle did seem to slow though, even as the bullet made a nice neat hole in one side of his head, and then ripped half his face off on the other.

A hush seemed to fall over the French as they realized something was wrong, and a ripple spread across the two ships as the individual combatants realized that their leader was dead.

Suddenly, time seemed to resume, though the pace of the battle was remarkably different. Elizabeth became consciously aware of the fight Will was engaged in. By the look of the bodies on the deck, Will had already dealt with two of the four original assailants, neatly halving the odds against him. The odds were still two against one though, bad odds, even for someone who was fighting for the very meaning of his existence.

Elizabeth wasted no time in picking up two of the pistols at her side, aiming one at each of the two remaining soldiers, and firing.

One of them dropped immediately, and the other stopped, clutching his left arm, only to be felled by Will's unquestioning blade.

"Their captain is dead." Elizabeth told him. Will looked around with wild eyes, still not quite certain what had just transpired. He recalled fighting the four soldiers, but it felt as if someone else had been controlling the motions, as if he had been a mere spectator in some sort of gladiatorial ring. The last time he had experienced anything like it, was when he thought he was going to die in his attempt to rescue Jack; his fears and emotions overran his mind and his body just took over.

After taking a moment to reorient himself, he took a long look at the second French vessel, a sinking feeling growing in his stomach. The cannon shutters along her hull were snapping open, one by one, as the ship came around for another pass. It was an ominous sight indeed, as the great ship of war slowed and then sat in the water, simply waiting for the Pearls motion to take them into the range of her guns.

Almost too late Will realized what was about to transpire, and threw the brake line off of the helms wheel, seizing control of the pirate ship and banking her hard to starboard.

The two ships lurched as the wind caught their sails at a new angle, swinging the first ship around and slamming its stern into the second ships starboard beam. A great boom resonated through the air, so deep and loud that it seemed the heavens were crashing down upon the battle.

The force of the impact snapped most of the grappling lines that had been holding the French vessel to the Pearl, as they had already been under a considerable amount of stress. The Pearl and her combatant began to diverge, and the few brave pirates who had managed to stand their ground when the French began advancing beat a hasty retreat, lest they be stranded on the enemy ship.

The two French ships, both heavily damaged from the collision, latched on to each other, struggling to evacuate the first ship onto the second, for when the smoke and dust cleared, it became clear to Will that the first ships stern was nearly destroyed, an angled cross section of the ships decks was visible from the stern castle down nearly to the water line. She did not have long before she would sink to a watery grave. Squinting, Will thought he could see shocked faces staring out of the gaping hole in their ship, but it might have just been his imagination.

"Holy fucking hell." an awed voice could be heard above them. Will looked up and found himself staring at an upside down pirate captain. Captain Sparrow had become entangled in several loose lines when the collision had jarred him from his hold in the other ships shrouds and swung him down near the Pearls mizzen mast. "Hello Will, Elizabeth." He said with a nod to each of them. "Mind if I drop by?" he smiled crookedly.

As if even fate was abhorrent of the horrible pun, the lines that were tangled around his feet gave way, and with an exclamation of surprise, Jack fell the rest of the way to the Pearls deck, depositing him with all the ceremony of trawlers hauling up a net of fish.

Standing precociously, looking for all the world as if he had meant to fall down, Jack dusted himself off a bit and took the helm from Will without a word. Jack darted his eyes about when he thought Will and Elizabeth weren't looking, attempting to ascertain if any of his crew had seen the ungainly incident. Finally satisfied; he began to shout orders.

"All hands not on the gun deck, man the lines and stand by to tack! We're going to come around full circle and rake their starboard bow with our guns!"

The pirates, though many were nursing minor wounds, scurried to obey; the battle wasn't over yet, and they were now in high spirits due to witnessing the massive damage that had been inflicted upon the French ships.

The Pearls twin adversaries limped in the water, the first ships crew desperately trying to evacuate to the second as their vessel sank beneath them. Even as Jack brought the Pearl about to end the battle, the first French ship that had fought so valiantly against the pirates spiraled to the depths, never to return to the cold waters of her birth.

The second vessel, which Jack could now see was christened the _Essandra, _listed heavily in the water, her deck crowded with half a crew more than she needed. She still had all of her sails, as opposed to her sister ship that now sailed beneath the water, but she had taken heavy damage on her starboard side, her deck was over crowded and the crew was disheartened by the sight of the pirate ship making a sweeping turn through the water.

-On the Essandra-

The Pearl was an ominous specter in the dissipating fog, and some of the saltier sailors whispered of an evil ghost that lurked the waters of the Caribbean, whose crew could not be killed, and never showed mercy. Some of the evacuees seemed confused about this, for they had seen some of the pirates drop before the bite of their blades, but whatever proof they had of the pirates mortality was now lost to Davey Jones locker.

Soon the crew and soldiers had convinced themselves that they were fighting an unbeatable foe, a dark punisher sent by Satan himself to exact justice for some transgression, real or imagined.

Such talk began to test the mettle of each man aboard, and each came to their own resolve, some kneeled on the spot and began praying fervently, hoping that a dispassionate god might find it in his heart to spare them an inevitable death, others though, strengthened for the knowledge, tightening their grips on their sabers and resolving to fight unto the end. The officers, as befit men of stature, showed no waver, no glimmer of dismay, despite the direness of the situation.

They believed the battle could still be won; the pirates had taken losses in the first skirmish, and the French crew outnumbered the pirates three to one. They could see that the Pearl was coming around, and was going to attempt to rake their bow, but they did not run; running from the faster ship would prove futile. They knew they had superior numbers, so all they had to do was trust that the pirate's greed would outweigh their caution and would attempt to board, and the Essandra would be victorious.

The captain of the _Essandra_, a small man with cunning eyes, beckoned to the one remaining officer that had survived the first attack. The officer seemed rather ridiculous with all of his pomp and medals, but he must have done something right, because he was still alive.

"Report." He said sharply in his native language.

"They came out of the fog on our starboard side, they didn't use cannons and instead boarded right away, they probably knew cannon fire would alert you."

"So who fired the shots that alerted us?" the captain asked. The officer spread his hands in a helpless manner.

"I'm not sure. I thought the pirates had already captured our gun deck. Believe me when I say that I was as surprised as they were when the shots went off. Whoever fired them deserves a medal."

"Indeed they do." The captain said quietly, and turned his spy glass once more towards the pearl.

-On the Pearl-

"Ahoy up there!" a voice shouted from the water. Jack nearly jumped out of his skin at the suddenness of it. Cautiously he and Will peeked over the gunnel. Jack half expected a mermaid, what with everything else that had happened that day, but to his relief, it was nothing so random.

Anamaria could be seen bobbing up and down as she supported herself in the water. Fortunately for her the Pearl was not yet up to speed, and Jack had just enough time to toss her a line and have her hauled up before the ship would have passed her entirely.

"You weren't going to leave without me were you?" she asked in seemingly good spirits, despite the fact she was dripping wet and bootless in the afternoon wind.

"Ana! You rogue, I thought you were dead!" he said.

"Just payin' ya back for all the times you pull that stunt on us." She said as if it were nothing. Jack however, could see that she was hurt by the way she clutched her side.

"What happened?" Jack asked her.

"I don't know Cap'n, one minute I'm standing guard, and the next me skulls a burstin' with light. When I came to, I was in the water, fightin' not to drown. Lost me best pair of boots to."

"Sully and Todd?" Jack asked.

"Dead, killed in the fightin'." She replied with a sad shake of her head.

"The top's'ls will be the poorer without them, he said solemnly.

Jack turned away from Anamaria as Elizabeth arrived to help the wounded woman. Looking up at the indicators to gauge the wind, he realized something important was missing.

"Run up our colors, let the Frenchmen see who they're dealing with!" he shouted, using a gleeful tone to further bolster the crew. There was nothing quite like fighting under a flag to give a sense of importance to a man, or woman for that matter.

Soon a great flag bearing skull and crossbones was hoisted aloft to the mizzen gaff, rippling grandly in the north easterly wind. The skull seemed to wink impishly across the waters at the Essandra, grinning its cadaverous grin and taunting them with death.

"Stand by to tack! Helms alee!" Jack ordered as the ship came around, the wind causing the sails to luff and back. He had to time it perfectly, to a certain extant the sails being aback would help the Pearl around, but there was a fine line between this and heaving too, which would stop her momentum altogether.

It was a meticulous process, the turning of a ship; for the captain and crew had to judge the wind just right. If they didn't, the wind wouldn't catch the sails right, and they'd be dead in the water.

The tack was executed nearly perfectly, as befit a crew of experience. The only thing that stopped it from being perfect, was that perfection is not in human nature. It was Jack's personal opinion that perfection was a myth, and a matter of perspective.

Nonetheless the wind was once again filling their sails, and the Essandra was making no move to run. Jack reminded himself that the men on board the Essandra probably outnumbered his crew three to one now that the remaining crew from the first ship had evacuated to the Essandra. They were probably planning some nasty surprise.

As the Pearl raced through the water towards the Essandra, Jack found himself wondering what had become of the officer he had been fighting. Jack didn't like to admit it, even to himself, but he had never been able to bring himself to really hurt a woman. After all it just didn't seem fair; woman weren't usually able to defend themselves, though it seemed just his luck that he seemed to be meeting every woman in the world who could, that very morning.

Still, as a general principle he couldn't physically hurt them, heaven forbid if his enemies ever found out. If Norrington ever got wind of it, he was sure the commodore would recruit an entire ship full of ladies and send them after him. Actually, when Jack thought about it, it didn't sound so bad; there were worse ways to go than being mobbed by a bevy of beautiful maidens.

The Pearl was drawing closer and closer to the Essandra, the proud French vessel waited with her sails luffing for her enemy to come to her. She was a beauty of a ship, despite the heavy damage on her starboard side. Looking at her port beam, Jack could almost imagine how she would look if she were properly outfitted and set free to a life of a pirate ship. He resolved to capture her, however daunting the task might seem. Besides, she was sure to come in handy later, and after that, he did owe Anamaria a ship.

First he would have to damage her, hopefully only a little.

"Stand by on the guns! Prepare to fire on my command!" down in the hatchway, Jack could hear as Bootstrap repeated his orders to Madding, and from Madding to the gun crew.

Again, as it is in all battles, the waiting and the tension seemed the worse part of it. This is perhaps why mankind keeps developing newer and faster modes of transportation, so that they can rush to their deaths all the quicker.

Jack heard the thumps on the hull as Madding ordered the gun ports opened, stem to stern, and a deep rumble as every one of the Pearl's guns were rolled out simultaneously.

Ahead of them, the Essandra loomed on the horizon, and Jack could almost see her cannons waiting to find their mark in the Pearls hull and masts. Fortunately, by the time the Pearl would be in range of their guns, she would already be halfway across their bow without having presented her beam as a target.

The Black Pearl leaped through the sea, her mizzen sail, or spanker, making it seem as if she were trying to steer herself in her eagerness to take the offensive. The breeze was picking up and the sea was becoming rougher, so that the Pearl dipped and lunged like a battle crazed warhorse, white foam spraying up over the bow and showering the foredeck in a cooling mist.

The Pearl's fog was almost completely gone now that it was no longer being generated, scattering almost completely on the increasing wind, save for a few tendrils that clung to the ship like streamers. A few roiling clouds could still be seen as they rolled away across the sea, and some of the supernatural fog pooled about the Pearls waterline, seemingly giving the black ship a cloud with which she might suddenly use to ascend to the very sky.

The early afternoon sun sparkled and danced upon the bright blue Caribbean waters, and to Jack it seemed it was a day better suited to relaxation than tumultuous battle. Nonetheless, it was battle that he found himself in, and far be it from him to turn away with such a tantalizing prize just within his grasp.

Jack looked at the Essandra, judging the closing gap between it and the Pearl carefully. He couldn't give the order too soon, but he couldn't give it too late either; there was a very narrow window that would allow maximum use of their cannons.

The Essandra began firing in the vain hope that they might do some damage, though they knew that the Pearl had the advantage over them. The Essandra had time to get off five shots; all of which missed their mark, before Jack finally saw the window.

"Fire port cannons!!" he roared, loud enough to be heard all the way down to the bilges. There was no delay or wait for a repeated order from Bootstrap or Madding. Immediately the port side cannons began firing, bow to stern, as each individual cannon crew waited to get the ideal aim as the Pearl passed the stationary Essandra.

The very deck beneath his feet vibrated in time with the roar of the cannons as the Pearls sides erupted with iron and fire. Shot after shot found its mark in the Essandra's bow, and great plumes of smoke spewed forth, masking the odor of blood with choking sulfur.

The roar and subsequent whistle of the cannonballs as they were fired through the air was enough to deafen anybody, and Mistlemyr, who had materialized from below decks to twine about Will's feet, laid her ears back. For the first time since the hellcat had smuggled away on the Pearl, Jack actually heard her let out a catlike sound, as she yowled her displeasure at the thundering noise.

As the Pearl passed the closest to the Essandra the respective crews of the two ships could actually see each others faces, and began yelling at each other. Obscenities, battle cries, and taunts echoed between the two hulls amidst the booming rapport of the cannons, though much of it was incomprehensible and foreign sounding, considering one crew spoke English, and the other, French.

Many of the pirates brandished weapons, light glinting off of blades as they were waved through the air by eager men pressed up against the port gunnel. Cannon fire was not the only weapons fire to be heard either; both ships sported riflemen lined up sporadically along the gunnels and on the tops, firing at whatever target they felt they had a chance of hitting. The led balls zipped through the air, leaving small trails of smoke behind them as they arced between the two combating vessels, though they did little good, the Essandra was still out of range for firearms.

The cannon fire on both ships stopped suddenly, leaving a ringing sound in Jack's ears. The last gun crew had fired their cannons and the Pearl was already out of range for any more shots on that tack, though undoubtedly, they were even now hurrying to reload, should Captain Sparrow need them again.

When the Pearl had moved fully out of range, Jack looked back and saw the full extant of the damage the Pearl had just inflicted. Gaping holes peppered the entirety of the Essandra's starboard bow, and even as he watched, one of the two huge anchors at the prow of the ship broke off and fell to the sea, the great splash of the thing slamming into the water rose even higher than the foredeck, showering dismayed sailors and soldiers alike with briny foam.

The Pearls momentum was carrying her quickly away from the weakened ship, they were almost two hundred yards past by the time Jack called the tack.

"Helms alee!" He shouted once again as he pushed the wheel hard to starboard, causing the Pearl to bank sharply to port. As he called the tack he told his crew to bring the sails to square, which would allow the Pearl to run swiftly with a direct tail wind.

The Black Pearl turned swiftly, making the turn in a space much smaller than a ship of her size ought to be able to. They were nearly sailing in their own wake as Jack brought the ship up on the port side of the Essandra, preparing once again to board, despite the insanity of the idea. The pirates were, after all, vastly outnumbered.

"Let fly your hooks!" he shouted, and for the second time that day, the air was filled with biting metal intent upon the capture of a prize. The iron hooks found purchase in the polished wood of the Essandra's gunnel, bringing the Pearl to a stop with her bow next to the Essandra's stern.

"Fire starboard! Obliterate their guns!" Jack ordered. At the same time the French captain let out a shout that Jack could only assume was a similar order to the one he had just given.

It came down to a matter of timing. The two orders had been given at almost the exact same moment, but the Pearls crew was just a touch faster to light the powder off.

The Essandra's cannons went flying as the Pearl fired straight into the gut of the French ship. Shrapnel sliced through the air as loaded cannons upended and shot into their own ship, or in some cases, they simply exploded, killing some men instantly, and maiming others horribly. Those who survived the initial blasts struggled to their feet and began trying to combat the numerous fires before they reached the powder magazine.

As the smoke rose up out of the ship, the pirates leapt to the offense, boarding the other ship in a flurry of violence. This time it was not so easy though; the French were prepared, and fought back viciously. Jack noticed something else as well; the pirates leaping over amidships were being rapidly herded to the stem and stern of the Essandra as the French divided them up.

"Stand your ground!" he shouted, desperate to stop the ploy before the French soldiers could spearhead a boarding party onto the Pearl. It was too late though, already blue coated French were forcing their way to the gunnel, leaping onto the deck and storming the Pearl's defenses.

Things were looking bad; half the crew was spread out across the other ship, and the rest were below decks, unaware of the French boarding party. More of the Essandra's crew had survived the cannon barrage than Jack had anticipated, making the situation dire indeed.

"All hands on deck! Fight for the Pearl!"

Bootstrap was the first on deck, rushing to meet the coming tide of battle; somewhere he had managed to find the time to pick up a second blade, and he and a few other pirates lucky enough to get on deck set to defending the Pearl with the fury of a cyclone.

With twin blades singing through the air, Bootstrap sliced through the French soldiers. He and the others managed to engage a good portion of the enemy, but not all, and the rest of the soldiers simply moved past to get below, intent on slaughtering the crewman on the gun deck while they weren't prepared.

As yet another contingent of Frenchmen began advancing aft, towards Jack, Will, and Elizabeth, Jack; never a religious man in the first place, nonetheless whispered a prayer for the Pearl, hoping that somehow he could get his ship out of the mess his pride had made.

AN: so here's chapter five. This story is actually turning out to be a real favorite of mine, seeing as how I've actually been pretty regular with updates. (regular as in more than once every six months).

The contest is still in effect, and already a couple of reviewers can expect to see character appearances. Not in the next chapter unfortunately, but very probably the chapter after that. So keep the reviews coming, and I'll keep the chapters coming.

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"Of all the stories you've told me, which ones where the truth and which ones were the lies?"

"My dear doctor, their all true."

"Even the lies?"

"Especially the lies."

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and if you don't know were that quote came from, shame on you.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

"What!! You can't just leave it there! How could the Pearl be losing?" Racheal exclaimed, flabbergasted that her friend could be so cruel as to leave off with such a cliffhanger.

"The Pearl hasn't lost yet, Racheal. You should know that Jack always has a plan B." Amber said as the evenings wind buffeted her short hair. She still stood at the helm, though her watch was drawing to a close. She adjusted the tiller slightly, bringing the ship closer to the wind.

"As I recall, he was already using plan B." Racheal said.

"Plan C then, but the point is, he always has something as back up." Amber said, waving her hand in the air as if to brush aside such a trivial matter.

"I don't know about that. He didn't seem to have any kind of back up plans when Barbossa marooned him that second time." Racheal said dubiously.

"Nonsense, he had the best plan he could come up with given his circumstance and resources. He got drunk, seems like a fairly acceptable solution to me." Amber replied confidently.

"Then why was it Elizabeth that got them off of the island?"

"Because Jack was thinking like a pirate; and if you'll recall, drawing the attention of the British navy isn't the best way for a pirate to survive." Amber argued. When Racheal opened her mouth as if to protest further, Amber held her hand up for silence. "That's not the point anyways. Do you want me to continue with the story or not?" she said to forestall any further argument.

Racheal fell silent.

"Your afraid of loosing the argument, aren't you?" she said after a moment of quiet.

"Just a little." Amber admitted "But, to change the subject completely, you might want to check the time, I believe it's just about time for the next watch to start, and it's 'my' duty as messenger to strike the bell."

Racheal glanced at the small wrist watch she wore clipped to her belt loop and shook her head.

"No, we have a little more time. Enough to continue the story, and you can keep talking even when the watch changes."

"Very well, but remember, it's not just my story. At the beginning we were both telling it. Truth be told, my throats getting tired from all this talking, I want to see if you can figure out a way for Jack and his crew to get out of that mess." Amber said.

"But how?" Racheal asked.

"Just think about the resources he has at his disposal." Amber reminded her.

"Gabriel and Shotts?" Racheal said after a moment of thought.

"No. Forget about them, they're long gone, as is Morgan." Amber told her.

"What about Mistlemyr and Rivsatim?" she asked.

"Both useful, but they're only part of the solution."

"Then what?" she asked.

"Just start talking, it'll come to you."

-----------------

A grim wind howled across the deck, even as the French pushed their way through the Pearls main hatch, and if anybody had been looking at the north eastern horizon, they would have seen the dark, pendulous clouds gathering there.

The cold wind eddied about, ruffling Jacks tangled hair and sending a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with the fact that his ship had just been well and truly boarded. He released the helm and drew his cutlass once again, holding firm to the frayed and worn hilt. Close by, the still drenched Anamaria did the same.

Will helped Elizabeth to the only cover to be had on the poop deck, standing resolutely beside her as she leaned behind the mizzen mast, pistol at the ready.

Down on the main deck, Bootstrap fought desperately, attempting to keep the frogs at bay long enough to allow the rest of the pirates to come up from below. Despite his best efforts though, the enemy soldiers continued advancing, including the rather large contingent moving aft towards Jack.

The soldiers charged the narrow staircases on either side of the stern castle, and Jack and Anamaria moved to intercept them, sending soldiers sprawling down the steps due to the advantage of height they had. The two pirates were so efficient that at first, Will thought that there would be no need for him to fight. Inevitably though, some were strong enough to make it past, unable to fell the pirate and so storming past Jack and onto the deck. The first was met by a sharply thrown ax, the well crafted tool whistled through the air to embed itself deeply into the man's forehead. The second man met a similar fate; his chest nearly clove in two as Will's ax bit into the man's flesh so deep the blade was embedded up to the handle.

Jack and Anamaria fought valiantly to hold their place at the head of the two stairways, Anamaria slashing with a wild abandon that befit a demon more than a human, let alone a woman. Jack set about with precision, systematically finding each weakness and exploiting it, sending dead men tumbling back amongst their fellows, further impeding their progress.

Jack met the slash of one of the soldiers, knocking the man's blade to one side and then slitting his throat with a vicious slash. The man fell to the side, unfortunately out of the way of the staircase. The next tried to charge Jack with his shoulders, intending to remove the troublesome pirate so that they could capture the helm and declare the ship taken, mistakenly assuming that his comrades below were having an easier time of it. Jack kicked him in the face and stabbed down into the man's back, and the man died without ever realizing that down on the main deck, the pirates were still fighting, and as the last of the advancing soldiers found their way below, they began winning against the French soldiers still on deck.

Unfortunately, it would all be for nothing once the men below reached the pirates on the gun deck. Nearly half of the Essandra's compliment of soldiers was now down there, ready to slaughter the unprepared gun crew before they could make it out onto the deck were they could properly defend themselves

To everyone's amazement however, the soldiers had not been fully below thirty seconds before they came back out in a mad rush, some shrieking as if the devil himself was on their tail. As they spilled back up on to the open deck, some stumbling and scrambling about on all fours, their weapons apparently forgotten, Granail followed cackling after, a real sword clutched in her transparent hand. She hounded after the fleeing soldiers even as the battle continued around her, gleefully felling any Frenchman who came within reach of her sword, and taunting any who were foolish enough to try and fight her.

Behind Granail, the pirates previously thought to be done for flooded up out of the hatch, adding their blades to the fight and their blood to the battle.

Aft on the main deck, just behind the Frenchmen assaulting Jack, Will, Anamaria, and Elizabeth, Mary Reed rose up from the wooden planks with her arms folded across her chest. There was a fire in her eyes and a smirk upon her face that only widened when the attacking soldiers noticed her. Without a word she seemingly dove into one of the men, and after a brief look of shocked fright, his face went slack, soon to be replaced by the same frightening smirk that had been seen on the ghosts face.

Under the influence of the ireful spirit, the man's blade turned on his comrades, sowing confusion and dismay amongst the previously organized assault. Mary Reed, in control of the French soldier, had felled three of the men before the man's comrades cut him down. As the limp body fell, Reed shrugged out of it as she would a coat, only to dive into another soldier. This time she only managed to take out one man before the body she occupied was cut down, and yet again she rose out of it and leapt into another. She kept up the pattern, though sometimes she didn't even have a chance to raise a hand before the man she was possessing at the time was cut down, but it didn't matter. There came a point when the confusion was so great that Jack stepped back from his defense and watched in amazement as the previously organized contingent fell to killing their friends and comrades in the mad paranoia that the ghost had induced. The soldiers he had been engaging didn't even look twice at their previous target as they began killing one another, their dementia complete, and utterly total.

After a few brief and bewildering moments of senseless bloodshed, Jack and Will descended the stairway. Will's mouth was slightly ajar at the carnage the one ghost had wreaked. Twenty men lay dead on the deck before the stern castle, twenty men that had slaughtered themselves in their panic.

The translucent form of Mary Reed moved over the bodies, preparing to go off and fight for another section of the Pearl. Jack stopped her with a word.

"Reed." He said in a soft but commanding tone. She turned to him with a questioning look on her face. When she didn't say anything but made it clear that Jack had her attention, he went on.

"Don't lose yourself love, we need you sane." He told her. She opened her mouth to protest, but then she looked at the bodies around her and closed it with a nod of acceptance.

"Yes sir." She said. Jack was slightly surprised; it was the first time she had acknowledged his authority as captain. Before he could remark on it however, she was gone, launching back into the fray, though this time with a bit more restraint.

---------The Essandra-------

At the same time that Granail and Mary Reed had launched their assaults, so too had the other ghosts. Cemeille rose up right at the center of the Essandra, causing confusion at the heart of the enemy, though not by the same means or degree that Reed did. Still, it was enough that a frightening specter was walking in their very midst, let alone that she was surrounded by a swarm of very real daggers. It was diverting enough that the pirates that had been trapped aboard the Essandra now had the diversion they needed to move back to the Pearl and solidify their defenses.

At the stern of the French ship, near were the Captain fought, Emily drifted bewitchingly out of the closed stern cabin door, heading straight for the sharp eyed master of the Essandra. Her ethereal dress floated about her as if it had a life of its own, and she reached out as if to caress his face. She was frighteningly beautiful, and involuntarily he took a step back. Still, he was no common sailor, to be frightened by such an apparition, so other than that one small step, he made no allowances.

She touched his face, and it seemed to him that a cold breath sighed over his cheek, as if the wind had just kissed him.

"Poor, lonely Athos." She said in a sibilant whisper. "How long ago was it that she betrayed you?"

"Not long enough to forget." He said, keeping his dark eyes on her, never letting his guard down. He wondered how she had learned his name, among other things, but did not ask; instead he concentrated on watching her carefully, preparing himself for anything she might do.

"All you have to do is die, and you will forget." She was right next to him, floating about and touching his shoulders.

"I thought that death might be a solution once, but now, looking at you, I'm not so sure that it would solve my problems." He said with an edge of amusement to his voice, despite the battle that raged about them.

"It would if you were to marry me. As I said, all you have to do is die." She said.

"As charming as the offer is, I don't plan on dying today." He said with a note of finality in his voice.

"Very well, but keep my offer in mind." She said as her angelic face faded from sight.

Around him, captain Athos looked at the battle, and realized she had distracted him longer than he thought. The tide of battle had turned, and it wasn't in his favor.

-----------The Pearl--------

The French soldiers had lost heart. Their planned attack had gone awry and their captain had yet to give them orders. The pirates were turning out to be trickier opponents than the officers had anticipated. It was becoming clear to the sailors that their superstitions had been correct; the crew of the Pearl was damned, and the ship was cursed.

Still, things were not exactly perfect for the pirates either, they had taken loses from the Essandra's gambit. The loses had not been counted, but they were felt in the absence of their blades. Battle was a thing of numbers and math, as much as blood and valor. In the heat of battle most did not notice their fallen brethren, the time for that would come later, with the burials, but the fact that they were gone made the pirates fewer.

Battle was never a pretty thing, and never was it so savage as it was upon the sea. It was as if the primal force of the great oceans infused a man, driving him to lengths of depravity not seen even by the Norse raiders of old.

Perhaps part of the reason was that upon the sea, men had nothing to hold them back, there were no innocents in the way. Only those ready to fight were willing to sail a ship of war or piracy, and so it was that without hesitation you could let your blade fall upon the neck of your enemy without feeling that you had treated your opponent unjustly.

Even pirates had a code of honor… when it could be afforded. Only the vilest of pirates slaughtered entire crews. Most of the time, a call for surrender was given, and even if the merchant crew fought, if they laid down their weapons, they were taken into custody while their ship was looted, and then sent on their way with an empty ship, but no worse for the wear from the time they laid down arms.

However it was a rare precedent indeed for a pirate vessel to attack a navy vessel, let alone two. Navy ships had far too many teeth for the average pirate's tastes; they were capable of putting up a coordinated fight, and they carried little of value besides their weapons. In an average pirate's life, the only time he would actually fight a military vessel was if the vessel was in pursuit of _them,_ not the other way around.

The legendary Captain Jack Sparrow was no ordinary pirate, however, and the French found the role of cat and mouse confusingly reversed. What really confused them however, was the question of how the pirates were still fighting despite facing a force of nearly twice their own numbers. They knew on a primal level that the pirates were either cursed, or saving that, had means that were not of this world, but on an intellectual level, the French only saw their superior numbers attacking the pirates… and failing. They still had yet to determine _why_ the pirates had attacked in the first place; little did they know that Jack's explicit purpose in this attack was to prevent them from reaching their destination.

Sharp staccato drumbeats rattled out over the battle from somewhere on the Essandra. While it was not uncommon for a military vessel to have a drummer, what was uncommon was that the drum was matched with a lilting fiddle, which played a jouncy tune from the quarterdeck of the Pearl. It seemed ridiculous at this point that the pirates had anyone they could spare to play, but captain Sparrow was not to be outdone, and this gave heart to the pirates, a willfulness that might not have been there otherwise.

The pirates and French fought furiously, the clash of swords ringing out as slashes met parries in an age old dance, and the blasts of French bayonets and pirate pistols and rifles sparked across the two decks, sulfurous clouds streaming from smoking barrels in the heavy wind.

So incensed by the battle were the crews of both ships, that even the greenest of sailors hardly noticed when the ships began to heave and toss beneath them as the oceans ire rose with the howling wind.

Jack corrected his balance without even thinking about it. And as he fought back to back with Will amongst a group of five French soldiers, he actually looked as if he was standing straight, and that it was the younger man who looked as if he were only just sobering up from a night of heavy drinking.

Around Jack and Will on the main deck, the primary branch of the fight seemed to be taking place, most of the pirates had made it to the Pearl, and most of the French marines had followed so that the deck of the Black Pearl was congested and one could hardly move for all the bodies littering the deck. Though Jack couldn't truly spare more than a glance, he thought there were more French bodies than pirates, but then, that could just be wishful thinking.

Further toward the bow, Bootstrap seemed to be busy barricading himself in a circle of bodies, as the French advanced on him and fell to his twin blades. He had not moved from the spot since he had come up from below, and it was becoming obvious to the French that to enter that circle was to die, for nothing living remained in it. This thought gave Jack a melancholy feeling, as he realized just how true those words were.

Anamaria was still guarding the helm, as was Elizabeth, but after Mary Reeds little display, the fight had moved away from the area. Still the two women were not entirely ignored, and Ana had her work cut out for her with the few brave marines that still tried to assault them, but it was not nearly the seething fiery battle that had engulfed the main and fore deck.

Jack blocked a slash from a soldier, and then cut him down, but even as the first fell, another came to take his place.

As Jack and the newcomer crossed blades in a furiously fast exchange, a blue gray flash leaped from the deck to sail over Jack's head, and then Will's, to land on the face of a soldier that was about to attack Will. Mistlemyr hissed as she savaged the man's face.

"He's _my_ person!" she growled, and both the pirate and the Blacksmith were quite surprised by the fierce vehemence in the cat's words.

Mistlemyr then jumped away again, landing neatly on another Frenchman's face and repeated the exercise. Jack, even as he fought against his current opponent, had eyes only for the first man that she had attacked; he had dropped his sword and was cradling his face in his hands, blood pouring from between his fingers. As he stumbled away blindly, Jack thought he could hear the man screaming, but it was hard to tell over the roar of the battle.

After that, Jack lost track of Mistlemyr, but he could tell by bloody faced French stumbling about that she was still at work. Meanwhile he and Will had other things to worry about.

The two were still surrounded, and in a bad spot. They fought beautifully together, as if they had choreographed the entire thing, much as they had the day of Jack's supposed execution, but that didn't change the fact that there were too damn many enemies around them.

"Jack look!" Anamaria said, pointing at the French ship. Jack looked over and saw that some of the pirates were finally making headway onto the Essandra.

He jumped as he heard a gunshot directly behind him, and turned to see a large marine poised for a killing blow. There was a smoking hole in his chest and he slowly keeled over, sparing Jack from a quick and ignominious death. As the man fell, Cullins was revealed behind him with a smoking pistol in his hand.

Cullins touched his brow in a quick salute, before he was swept away by the tides of battle.

"Bloody hell, but that was close." Jack muttered. He had time for nothing else as he was once again beset by the enemy, blocking upward, the slashing diagonally into the chest of his attacker.

Then, the flow of movement changed, and he and Will were separated. Jack hardly noticed, but wished the young man well in his heart, for in this battle, even for so sure a swordsman as Will there was no assured survival. The same could be said of Jack, but he did not think of that; he was Captain Jack Sparrow, sacker of Hell, Nassau island, Isla de Muerta, and other equally disreputable places, rescuer of damsels, and captain of the Black Pearl. If he wasn't immortal, he was damn close.

Jack's sword moved so quickly, cutting down the men of the Essandra with such speed and accuracy, that he was quite literally taken by surprise when there were no more French to fight.

The crew of the Pearl had fought with such style and aggression that the French had almost entirely been beaten back to there ship. Even the French were surprised to find themselves so sorely repulsed from the pirate ship. It was as if the Pearl itself had ejected them from her decks.

That wasn't the end by far however, and Jack knew it. He was unsure his crew could hold out for much longer. Already the battle had taken far more time and men than Jack had planned, and his crew had responded admirably; a measure of how much they trusted Jack to get them out of the situation. Or perhaps they might phrase it, how much they trusted Jack to get the Pearl out of the situation; the ship would always be his first priority, above even gold, jewels, and rum.

The pirates were ready to press the attack, repelling the last of the French crew from the Pearls decks, and it seemed perhaps that they may yet win the day. Before they had a chance however, the battle, as battles are wont to do, changed.

Now, Jack was used to changing the rules, but he never much liked it when something else changed the rules on him, even if it was a force of nature. Especially if it was a force of nature; a man could get killed trying to argue the proper way of things with a Caribbean storm.

Both ships pitched as the massive swell hit the Pearls starboard side, and for one terrifying instant both ships lay nearly horizontal on the water. Jack scrambled on the deck, searching for a handhold before he was thrown from the deck by the sudden storm. He found and grasped tight to the mizzen topping lift, a line secured near the ratlines. Jack had only his sailors instincts to thank, on the open sea, you were either ungodly fast, or you were dead.

Then the swell passed beneath the two ships and they were tilting the other way, the crew clinging for dear life lest they be tossed to the merciless sea. The sun overhead faded from view as the dark clouds of the storm engulfed them.

The wind bellowed its displeasure, making it known that this was no ordinary storm. All thoughts of battle were swept from the crews mind as they began fighting to keep their ships afloat.

"Luff the sails! Cast off sheets, bring 'em down!" Jack roared into the wind, hoping that somehow his crew would hear him and set to the task. As it turned out, they either heard him, or common sense told them to hop to and bring the sails down before the pressure of the thundering gale on the sails rolled the ship right over into the water.

As fate and irony would have it that day, it was the Essandra's presence that saved them, her hull added stability to the Pearl, acting like a makeshift catamaran and providing that little extra that kept them upright.

And then they were in the deep valley between crests, looking at a wall of water on each side. Jack thought that the two walls would surely collapse upon them, smashing them into the depths, but though he waited, it never happened. The ship was already rising up the side of the second giant swell when a flash of lightning danced across the sky, very close above them.

Dazzlingly bright, it illuminated the depths of the wave beside them, and that was when Jack saw something that was worse even than the sudden storm that seemed so determined to dash them to pieces.

The lurking shadow of a sinuous form twisted inside the swell. This was no small fish risen up in the wave, but a snake like form nearly seventy feet long.

Jack had not seen the likes of this for nearly thirty years, and he had hoped to never again. But the world was a small place, despite evidence to the contrary, and so it was that Jack again faced the nightmare of the Mediterranean, the great sea serpent, which prayed upon whales and ships alike.

With an echoing shriek like that of a whale, it burst forth from the wave that had shrouded it, its neck frills and dorsal spine waving in the wind, and all seventy glittering feet of it flashing in the jittering fork of lightning that once again arced across the sky.

It sailed over the two ships with the power of its great leap, purple blue scales shedding water down upon the decks as it nearly flew between the fore and main mast of the Pearl.

Then, it was across the two ships, clearing the incredible distance with hardly any effort at all. As it splashed into the side of another wave on the Essandra's starboard side, its powerful tail gave one last flick as it disappeared inside the wave.

Jack watched the water closely, using any flashes of lightning to his advantage to see inside the waves, hoping for advance warning of the serpents return, for he knew it would.

Once again, a fork of lightning slashed violently through the clouds, allowing Jack to see it just a split second before it came soaring from the wave to land coiled on the Essandra's deck. Some men could be seen caught beneath it, either already dead or being slowly suffocated beneath its crushing weight. Again, it gave that echoing shriek like an enraged whale, before snapping up an unfortunate sailor in its great, fanged jaws. With a sudden twist of its head, it sent the man flailing into the air, and then caught him, this time swallowing him whole.

The Frenchmen who were still holding there guns and bayonets from the battle began firing on the thing, but this did little but enrage it. It opened its great maw, wicked, scythe like teeth glittering in the flare of gunshots and lightning alike. It began spitting a noxious green poison at the men who fired on it, and were the poison touched flesh, limbs disintegrated, skin and muscle simply melting away to leave charred bone behind.

Jack thought fast, weighing his options; he could not, by point of fact, cut the Essandra's lose and wash his hands of the affair, for while the serpent would undoubtedly finish his battle for him, the simple fact remained that it was only the Essandra's presence that was keeping the Pearl afloat. So while cutting the lines securing the French vessel to the Pearl might save he and his crew from the snapping jaws of the monster, the Pearl would sink if he did; never had he encountered such a storm in a ship that came out in one piece, in fact he couldn't recall having encountered a storm of this fury at all, it was as if it was driven by something supernatural.

He looked back at the serpent just as it was swallowing a second Frenchman. Its thrashing tail whipped about violently, sweeping men overboard, presumably to be caught and devoured later at the things leisure.

Jack came to the conclusion that he would just have to get it off the Essandra, hopefully before it ran out of French men and decided to try and stomach a pirate or two… but not too soon before.

Jack looked around the storm tossed deck, struggling to keep his feet beneath him even as he kept a hold of the topping lift. He would need help, and he would need someone crazy enough to think that helping him was a duty that had to be done.

He spotted Will struggling to belay a sheet so that the rest of the crew could get aloft and furl the sails. As was to be expected, they were all having a job of it, especially those on the port side of the yard arm, closest to the wild serpent; but they were doing it, and what that said of their bravery, fortitude, and overall insanity spoke volumes to Jack.

"We have to get that sea monster off the deck! We can't risk cutting the frogs lose, they're the only thing that's keeping us from the depths." Jack shouted to the blacksmith after he made his way carefully across the sharply rolling deck.

"Aye, but how do we kill it?" Will shouted back. Despite the fact they were a mere foot apart, they had to shout to hear each other over the storms fury.

"Kill it? Are you daft? What with the way it's thrashing about, I doubt we could get close enough." Jack yelled.

"Then what do you propose?" Will asked, it was a reasonable question, despite being shouted at the top of his lungs.

"We put that overgrown worm on a hook and go fishing." Jack told him with a predatorial grin.

The two stumbled across the deck, after Jack put Tom on the line Will had been struggling to tame. Will followed the Captain, unsure as to what Jack was cooking up. Jack fetched one of the grappling hooks and lines that hadn't been used in either of the boardings, and with quick, practiced motions, untied it from its place under the gunnel. He handed it to Will, who accepted it uncertainly; surely he wasn't supposed attack the monster with this little grappling hook!

For himself, Jack found an unused line and, after divesting himself of his coat, hat, boots, and weapons belt, tied a quick bowline around his waist, keeping the other end in his hand.

Jack made his way to the stern of the Pearl, and looked at the Essandra's bow, and after what appeared to be an internal deliberation, he tossed his effects beneath one of the Pearls staircases, told Will to follow him, and then jumped across to the besieged French ship.

So preoccupied with the great serpent in their midst, the French hardly noticed them as the two boarded. Jack tied off the other end of the line he had tied about his waist onto the gunnel, and then took the line end of the grappling hook Will held.

"When you feel a tug on this line, throw that hook for all your worth. It's imperative that you get it all the way around the beasties neck. After your sure it's secure, get the hell out of the way, there's going to be a rather large splash." Jack ordered Will.

Then without another word, Jack turned and climbed over the gunnel, not back to the Pearl, but down the side of the Essandra's hull. Will tried to protest, but the Pirate was already gone, and Will didn't dare to take his eyes off of the monster.

The thing thrashed and shrieked, delightedly killing anything that got close enough. The men of the Essandra were attempting to throw lines over it to pin it down, but there was nothing for the numerous ropes to find purchase on save for the many spines along the creatures back, and these seemed to be flexible enough that the lines just slipped over them.

Will began moving to the stern of the enemy ship, advancing closer to the things neck, which was the narrowest part of its body. He was careful not to make any sudden moves, lest he attract its attention. He feared that at any moment it would notice him, and either spit that horrible poison at him or just swallow him whole. Fortunately for Will, there were more than enough people on the deck of the Essandra to keep the serpent occupied.

He kept most of the coil in his hand, so that when the tug came it would not tangle his line.

The serpent was an awe inspiring sight up close; its purple and blue colors seemed better suited for a tropical bird than a giant predator, but the scales glistened like jewels and made it seem a grander animal. The spiny frill around its neck was webbed in between with a thin membrane of skin, which was just as brightly colored as its body but in hues of red and orange, the same scheme held true for its dorsal ridge and powerful flukes as well.

And then Will saw into its eyes; bright vorpal spheres that glittered like dark suns, and what's more, he saw the intelligence in those eyes. This thing was no mindless beast, but a malignant entity that knew very well what it was doing. Will wondered what had been done to it to cause it to hate humans, for that was there too, absolute loathing.

The tug came, and Will had no more time to wonder. He took the hook in his hands and hefted it for just a moment, before he threw it straight and true, just as Jack had told him to. He seemed to have the luck and aim that none of the Frenchman around him had, and the hook sailed perfectly between the gap in the frill and dorsal ridge. The rope fell over the neck, and the hooks momentum caused it to swing right back under the serpent's throat, were the hook caught on its own line.

The serpent jerked in surprise and Will hastily let go, but Jack seemed to have tied the line to something on the Essandra's port bow, for when the monster jerked its head back, the line cinched tight around its neck.

Will raced back to the gunnel and leapt over to the Pearl with his heart in his throat, unable to quite believe what he had just done. Elizabeth greeted him, despite the heaving of the ships on the storm tossed waters, and together they raced to the stern to see what Jack had done. They arrived just in time to see Jack clinging like a monkey to the side of the heaving Essandra, as he finished severing the six inch thick rope that held the anchor in place on the Essandra's bow. As it fell, time seemed to slow, or at least Will's perception of it, as his mind struggled to comprehend all the ramifications of what was happening.

He noticed several things; one was that there was a small line tied to the anchor, the only line that was not severed. Two, was that the line was the other end of the grappling hooks line that Jack had taken. Three was that humongous anchor was falling rapidly into the churning sea, dragging that line, and the sea serpent that it was affixed to, in after it.

As the serpent was jerked back by its neck, there was an almost comical look of surprise in its eyes. Its enormous body was pulled violently across the deck, and its entire body writhed in an effort to find some purchase which it could cling to. Its heavy coils smashed into railings and stanchions, sending splinters of wood in every direction. It reached the bow, and stopped with a jerk against the cathead before the stress against it proved too much even for its sturdy design. With a great ripping and groaning noise the entire cathead was sheared off. And then finally there were no more obstructions between the serpent and the water. Will could see Jack smiling triumphantly as the seventy foot leviathan fell past him into the stormy ocean.

The serpent would not be rid of so easily however, and in one last spiteful swing of its tail, Elizabeth was torn from Will's arms, and the line that held Jack to the ship was snapped, and together Jack and Elizabeth fell to the black ocean in which there was almost no hope of surviving, dragged down to the depths by the ireful monster.

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AN/ this has been by far one of my favorite chapters as far as description goes, but let me tell you, illustrating a tropical storm with words is no easy task. If it seems rather sudden I apologize, but that's the nature of such storms, no one sees them coming.

Also before I forget, I do not mean to portray the French as bad, and I hope that comes through in my writing, but the simple fact was that I needed a villain, and at the time it was France that was fighting England. It could have just as easily been the Spanish, or the polish, or any other seafaring nation, but I think France gets short changed when it come to naval history, so I'm writing a little of my own. Another thing, the use of the term 'frog' is not meant to be derogatory in any way, it is simply one of the names that Englishmen called Frenchman, and while at the time it was meant to be mean spirited, its use in my story is solely for historical accuracy and I apologize to anyone who takes offense. (I should have said that chapters ago, sorry.)

The contest is still in effect by the by.

And thank you to all those kind reviewers, you make my day!

-Sirval


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter seven

Amber paused; after once again having taken over the story and introducing the sea serpent, her voice was running ragged.

"No don't stop! Keep going!" Racheal said breathlessly, still in the grip of the story.

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_The serpent would not be rid of so easily however, and in one last spiteful swing of its tail, Elizabeth was torn from Will's arms, and the line that held Jack to the ship was snapped, and together Jack and Elizabeth fell to the black ocean in which there was almost no hope of surviving, dragged down to the depths by the ireful monster. _

"**Elizabeth!!!" **Will screamed as if his heart was being torn from his body. He threw himself at the gunnel, attempting to jump in after his beloved wife, disregarding entirely the fact that such an attempt would be suicide.

He was halfway over the side when somebody seized his arms and hauled him back, Will turned and fought the interloper tooth and nail. He had to get to Elizabeth!

Somebody punched him so hard he saw stars, and this stunned him enough that he stopped fighting long enough to see that it was Anamaria that had stopped him.

"Stop struggling you stupid boy! You won't do them any good if you jump in yourself!" she said.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" he asked desperately.

"You need to get yourself below; I won't have you trying to jump again. I'll keep an eye out for them, if they resurface we might be able to haul them back in." She shouted over the wind.

"But I-"

"No buts, if they make it, they make it. I'd say they have as good a chance as any of surviving, which is next to none, but for Captain Jack, it just might be enough."

"I will not sit idly below while Elizabeth is in peril!" Will shouted with just as much rage and despair in his voice as could be heard in the storm howling around them.

"Fine then, jump in after her! Fat lot of good you'll be able to do her when you're drowning. If your fair maiden has even the slightest chance, Jack will see that she gets it." Anamaria said as she released her grip on his arms, gesturing to the railing and the dark waters below.

Will almost took her up on the invitation to jump, but then his vision cleared of rage and he realized the woman was right, if he jumped he would just be another that needed rescuing. The least he could do for Elizabeth was not get himself killed in a fit of despair.

So instead, he went to the railing and watched the waters for any sign of Elizabeth or Jack, hoping against all that he would be able to see them in the storm wracked sea.

But even as he clung to the rail and peeled his eyes open so wide that they stung in the biting wind, he knew in his heart of hearts that they would not be returning to the surface for him to see.

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The day was as black as midnight, for the heavy clouds obscured even the slightest glimmerings of the bright Caribbean sun. The only light came from the jagged violence of lightning lancing through the pendulous void, and the only thing that could be heard above the howling wind was the terrible deep rumblings of the thunder. The awful sound was so close to the two ships that it could almost be heard to precede the lightning, though whether this was true or just liberal license on the interpretation of events was never to be verified.

In the midst of the storm, very few pirates realized that anything was amiss. All they knew was that the sea serpent was gone from the Essandra's deck, and that the storm was still trying to toss them about. The only ones who knew of the tragic loss of the young governess and their captain were the few on the quarterdeck, Anamaria, Will, and a few others. In truth, even those who knew were too busy fighting for survival for the full impact of the loss to hit them, only Will despaired, his soul rending in two as he sought to see his love in the waters mad grip.

A great swell again rose out of the water, taller than any that had come before. It slammed in to the Pearls windward bow, nearly rolling her right over. Pirates clung to anything they could as the water washed straight over the deck, ripping at them and trying to tear them away from the only sanctuary they had left, for surly, falling to the sea now meant death. The water continued to coarse over the ship, biting at her yard arms in its efforts to drag the Pearl down, but the Pearl would not be tamed so easily.

Amidst cascades of white water, she hauled herself up from the sea, dragging back the Essandra as well. The effort was nothing short of spectacular, for surely no ordinary ship could have such strength. The Pearl matched herself against the sea, her bluff bow rising again and again, even as the great ocean tried to swamp her.

A keening sounded through her riggings though, a mournful whistle that almost seemed as the wailing of a bereft woman. The Pearl struggled from the water repeatedly, seemingly looking for her captain. And perhaps it was true that the ship itself could feel the absence of him, the supernatural bond between captain and ship causing the vessel to strive through the treacherous waters in search of him.

Strive as she might however, the captain was not to be found.

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The storm was a dry one, the most dangerous kind, for if lighting were to strike one of the masts, there would be no way to extinguish the conflagration that ensued. Every time a spear of lightning ripped its way through the sky, a buzz could be felt in the air, tingling on skin and hair with the discharged energy it left behind. The lingering effects unnerved even the heartiest of the pirates, and many feared for their lives as they had not even for the battle. After all, a man had some say in the matter when being attacked by another man, but in the merciless, uncaring storm, they found only dispassionate chaos that did not care, nor even realize the effect it was having upon the fragile vessels that were being dashed about on the oceans surface, let alone the insignificant creatures that clung to those vessels.

With a horrible ripping sound, pirates on the fore course were sent crashing to the deck as the sail tore itself to shreds in the wind. Lethal streamers of canvas lashed about in the gale, leaving bloody gashes were they struck flesh.

Some of the men thrown to the deck struggled back to their feet to continue taming the Pearls wayward sail; others did not get back up at all; either dead, or wishing they were. Surely the pirates in the rigging envied the dead's rest; again and again they would gather up canvas, only to have it ripped from their numb fingers by the wind.

The tattered course continued to whip about, but despite this, the men on the sails above it went about the arduous tasks, for truly, there was no way they could not. A man did his job on a ship, and if the job was climbing up an eighty foot mast in hurricane force winds to balance on a small rope while they tried to gather up sail that was trying its hardest to kill them, they did it. Surely sailing was the maddest profession on the planet, and as such, epitomized human nature.

Finally though, the sails of the Pearl were furled, saving only the jib and mizzen sails to allow for maneuvering, reducing the surface area of the ship by at least half, so that the driving wind did not put so much pressure on it. The dangerous tilt of the ship righted itself as much as it could, but the Essandra, her crew decimated by the battle, the serpent, and the storm, did not have enough men to complete the job so quickly. Her sails flogged about in the wind, making cracking sounds like a whip, only much louder and deeper. More than a few brave men in the rigging were sent falling to their deaths, smashed upon the deck or tossed into the churning sea.

The unfurled sails on the Essandra caused the Pearl to tilt and lean with the French ship, who was still at the absolute mercy of the wind. It was then that Bootstrap noticed that the many lines holding the two ships together were in danger of snapping under the pressure.

"Slack the lines! Don't let them break loose or we'll all be goin' down!" so saying, he raced to the bow, were one of the Pearls mooring lines lay curled. Unlike the thin grappling lines, this was meant to hold a heaving ship to its dock no matter what the weather.

As fast as he could, he began threading the heavy line through the scuppers and hawse holes of the two vessels, leaping like a mad man from one vessel to the other as he moved down the rail.

Meanwhile, sailors checked the grappling lines that were already in place, loosening them up so that there would be some slack for the Essandra to fight against.

The two ships continued to dip and rise through the huge swells, climbing one side of a wave only to drop suddenly into another valley. More than one breaker crashed over the deck, sending any who were not holding tight enough to something sprawling. The blood from the battle began to wash away in great rivulets, emptying out through the scuppers along with sea water. Bodies of French and pirates alike were swept away as well, sinking down to their dark rest in Davey Jones locker.

Bootstrap was just about to order some of the crew over to the Essandra to help get the sails together, when the Frenchmen at last seemed to get it together, out of sheer desperation if nothing else.

And then, all that remained was to survive the storm, and a daunting task it was. There was no concept of time remaining, it was mid afternoon at least, but it was as dark as pitch in the midst of the storm. Even if anyone had had a way of tracking the time, it would have been moot, it was their perception of time that mattered, and to the pirates, it seemed to be an eternity that they were caught in the chaotic miasma that besieged them.

There were many times that day that it seemed that all was lost and the ship was about to tip over and throw the rest of the crew into the depths, to be with their brethren already sent there by the battle. But always at the last moment the two ships would right themselves in the water, and the crew would get an extra few eternities before they were once again faced with death.

Through most of it the only things they could do was to clutch tight to something and pray, pray for deliverance, or for a quick death, whichever mattered most to the individual. Even those that prayed for a quick death didn't really want to die, for death was never something to be desired; too many of these men had seen enough to now about death intimately, flirting with it daily as they did, but a quick death was to be desired over the slow suffocation of drowning, water filling your lungs as you tried to gasp for air, and then the sickly wrong feeling of something foreign preventing you from breathing.

It was a feeling that Bootstrap knew only too well.

As the storm tossed them about, he clung fast to the fore top's'l halyard, and wondered if it was possible to die twice. He didn't find the thought particularly frightening, but it would be sad to think that Jack went to all that trouble to bring him back only to loose him again a week later.

Still, a week of life was better than none at all, and if he was ripped from his hold to drown once again, at least he had gotten a chance to see his son again, and meet his daughter in law. He wouldn't mind seeing his grandchild though, and he knew that Will would never forgive him if he died before the child was born.

The day wasn't over, after all, and if he had anything to do with it, he'd be walking among the living for a bit longer.

The storm continued, worrying at the two ships like a dog on a bone, and the passage from day into night was marked only by a descent into an even more complete darkness. In the total darkness Anamaria clung to the helm, trying to keep the ships stern to the wind, so that the Pearl was not broadsided by any more waves as it had been in those first terrifying moments at the start of the storm. She could not see at all, and so could only rely on the direction of the wind on her face. It took all of her strength to keep the struggling helm on course, but even though she was exhausted she did not release it, she had a job to do, and she could not afford to let anything so small as exhaustion to get in her way.

And then the rain began, and in a strange irony the storm lessened. The pirates whooped for joy at the feeling of the rain streaming down upon them, for it meant that the ship no longer needed to fear a strike of lightning as much. Indeed, the lightning began to move away, or rather, it was likely that the Pearl was moving away from it, having finally escaped the heart of the storm.

However the torrential rain was driven by the howling wind, and it pelted their hands and faces painfully. They had already been wet from the great breakers crashing down upon them, but it soon became evident that this was a more persistent and miserable form of dousing. Even the oil slicked coats of those lucky enough to have them soaked through after five minutes.

On and on it went, the ship being bounced about the waves as if they were a leather ball, the thunder rumbling ominously through the heavens, the wind rendering any speech mute, and the rain chilling them to the bone. The sheer miserable truth of their mortality was being shown to them in one of the worst storms they had ever weathered, but still they weathered it. Though the pirates knew themselves to be in dire straits, they turned and faced the storm with as much bravery as they could muster. A land bound man would panic in the face of such natural fury, for though they might indeed experience a storm such as this, they would be safely on dry land, where at least the ground beneath their feet was constant. Sailors have no such comforts, they are thrown into a world where the ground could turn under their feet, for a ship moves as the fiery sea moves, and not even flame can be so furious as the oceans wrath raised.

Time lost all meaning and it seemed that the pirates descended into madness, being unable to see, except when the lightning cast everything into terrifying relief. They could not even light the lanterns, for the wind and rain would extinguish them soon after. They were unable to hear anything except the storms wrath, they could not even hear their own voices, and the driving rain had made them so numb that it was impossible to feel anything.

Some, holed up below decks, were at the same time safer, and worse off. Though in a few places there were some lanterns that remained lit, and the pirates there could see, it felt as if they were trapped in a small box. Even those without any problems with small spaces felt claustrophobic, for being trapped in a large wooden box floating on the sea felt at that time very much like being trapped in a coffin.

Still this is where the majority of the crew was; Bootstrap had ordered them there, and only the barest minimum necessary stayed above. With the furling of the sails completed, it made no sense to keep the crew above decks when they would be safer below.

Many men were working hard at the pumps, for every time the furious sea washed over the Pearls decks, the water seeped in through the damaged planking left from the battle, and even down through the closed hatches, making the Pearl too heavy. It was back-breaking work, and was usually considered the worst job on any boat, but in this case it served to distract them from the dooming waters pounding against the hull. A fierce rhythm sounded out as the men pumped, like the beating heart of some huge leviathan. Then, amidst the din of the pumps, the troubled sea, and the agonized groaning of the Pearl herself, a defiant voice began calling out a song.

It was a grim worded song, but it echoed throughout the hull as more and more men picked it up, providing a sanctuary of sound that rang out true and clear, easing worried hearts, if only a fraction.

"_Pump me lads, _

_Pump 'em dry,_

_Down to hell _

_And up to the sky._

_Bend your backs _

_And break your bones_

_We're just a thousand _

_Miles from home…"_

After all, they had already been to hell, and it wouldn't surprise a one of them if the Pearl were to grow wings and alight to the sky.

The song surrounded them, bringing a small glimmer of hope to the miserable crewmen below. It came to a point when even those not working at the pumps sang it, supporting their comrades to the best of their ability. With so many voices singing out against the darkness, a sense of unity pervaded through the ship, and the thought came that no matter what happened, their fellows would be right there next to them. They would die together, or not at all.

---------------

Above decks was another matter however. There would be no solace to be found in a song, for no song save perhaps an angels would be heard above the driving wind.

Pirates clung desperately to the ship, doing there best to keep the ship from flying apart under the stress. Only Bootstrap, Will, Marty, Suvern, Tom and Anamaria remained above, with Ana at the helm and Suvern helping her.

Bootstrap had tried to get Will below, but his son was a stubborn man, and clung to the rail with a death grip, muttering to himself about how he had to be there when Elizabeth came back, though Bill could not hear the words, for they were snatched away by the wind. This being so, he could not understand why Will would not leave, for he did not yet know of the loss of the captain and his daughter in law. Still, if Will wanted to stay above decks, even in this weather, Bill would not stop him. He cared about his son, enough to know that Will was leading his own life now, and did not need Bootstrap around to tell him what to do. So he left his son staring hungrily into the sea.

The storm raged through the night, or at least that's what some of the saner minded crew thought, and on into morning, for the sun shone briefly below the clouds in the east, lighting the mountainous waves and clouds alike with a murderous red light, before the world was once again dark as the sun ascended into the sky above the clouds.

And then, at noon of the same day, they reached the edge of the storm, the waters calming and the clouds dispersing enough to allow the sun to once again grace the ocean with its warming light. And though Will never left his spot through the entire storm, he did not see Elizabeth or Captain Sparrow in the water again.

Drenched and bedraggled, the pirates pulled themselves up from below, cautious of the Essandra, but too tired to really do anything about it. The French ship had made it through with them fortunately, for it was the only thing that had kept them afloat, but the deck seemed deserted.

Bootstrap walked the length of the Pearl, looking over at the Essandra and examining the situation. There were still a few bodies that had not washed overboard, but of the living there was no sign. Surely the storm couldn't have killed them all? There were still at least fifty men aboard when the Serpent had been dispatched.

Thinking of the serpent, Bootstrap wondered how it had been removed, for he hadn't exactly had the opportunity to watch at the time. He would ask around later, but for now, he had a task at hand.

Examining the Essandra, Bootstrap realized that the longboats were missing from its deck, at the same time a splash could be heard on the starboard side of the French ship. Throwing caution to the wind, Bootstrap jumped nimbly across the gap between the two ships and rushed to the starboard side.

Peering down at the water from the deck of the Essandra, Bootstrap saw that the ships two longboats had been launched, and the escaping French were already pulling hard to get away. It was apparent that they had been planning this through the night, for there were plenty of provisions secured in every available place in the two boats. Each boat carried twenty men, nearly twice the number of men they were designed to carry. The escapees were the dreg remains of the crew; only two officers remained, one was the captain, and the other was the light footed popinjay that Jack had fought briefly. Aside from those two, the rest were marines and sailors.

Bootstrap did a quick tally, looking for the lord and lady. He was trying to see if they were escaping, for he had never seen them during the battle, but they were not there. Bootstrap turned back towards the Pearl, looking for Jack, intending to ask him if he wanted to pursue the fleeing frogs.

Bootstrap realized then that something was amiss. Normally Jack would have beaten him to the gunnel to see what was going on, but he had not. Now that he thought about it, Bill should not have had to have given half of the orders he had last night; Jack would have seen to them.

"Where's Jack? Somebody go fetch him." Bootstrap said authoritatively. There was a slight stir in the crew, murmurs as they realized something was wrong.

"Where's Jack?" Bootstrap asked again, this time with an edge to his voice. He wasn't aware of crossing back to the Pearl, but suddenly he found himself there.

"He fell behind." A hoarse whisper said dejectedly. Bill looked around for the voice, and the crew parted to reveal his son standing by the staircase, holding Jack's hat.

"What?" Bootstrap asked disbelievingly, a shiver ran through the crew, and Bill felt as if his insides had been frozen solid.

"He's gone, and so is Elizabeth. The sea serpent…" Will was staring into nothing, his mouth working, but no sound coming out. Will didn't even seem aware that he was no longer speaking, and he seemed to lose balance and ended up leaning against the bulkhead, sliding down slowly with a lost look in his eyes.

"She's gone…" he said in a voice that was almost too quiet to be heard. He had no emotion on his face, just stunned blankness. The disbelieving despair in his voice was enough however, it conveyed all the emotion in his soul; Elizabeth was gone, and so was his unborn child, Will's meaning for existence was gone.

The news hit Bootstrap like a brick in the face, and suddenly he was unable to think straight, nor hardly even breathe right. His world compressed down to a tiny point in his mind, and his vision swam.

Jack was gone. Elizabeth was gone. His grandchild…

Suddenly it was the mutiny all over again; Jack, bruised and battered, looked murderously at Barbossa as he stood on the plank, glaring out of a swollen eye. Barbossa had mutinied, and Bootstrap had learned of it to late to warn Jack. If he hadn't agreed to it, they would have killed him so he couldn't try to stand with the captain.

The one thought that kept running through his head was that it was senseless; there was no point to it except for Barbossa's lust for power. Jack would have given every one their fair share of the treasure, for as far as pirates went, he was not an overly greedy man. But Barbossa had lied to the men, swaying them with false words about Jacks supposed plan to kill them all, and take the treasure for himself. Bootstrap knew this to be ridiculous, for how could Jack sail anywhere without a crew? The Pearl could not be run by one man, or even two or three; the Pearl was a full rigged ship, and though it could be sailed by six men, it required at least two hundred and fifty men to run properly as a fighting vessel, and that was supposing that he could somehow first manage to slaughter an entire crew without being killed himself. So if Barbossa's story was to be believed, Jack would have the gold all to himself alright, all to himself on an uninhabited rock, with a limited supply of food, and nowhere to spend his gold.

But just as Jack couldn't feasibly expect to fight the entire crew, nor could Bootstrap; he was trapped between death and betrayal, and he had to remind himself of his family, where would they be if he could not support them?

So he had agreed to Barbossa's mutiny, though it tore every moral principal he had to ribbons, and a fat lot it did for his family. He had died a week later, a broken and unhappy man.

The same thought that had run through his mind then, occurred now. '_I've failed him.'_ Bootstrap thought '_I was given a second chance, and I've failed him.' _

Only this time, Jack was dead, not just marooned.

This time it was Bootstraps throat that worked soundlessly as he struggled to find the sound within him to give orders; he could not take the time to grieve now, they had a ship to mend. His eyes stung and his chest burned with suppressed rage, but that did not stop him.

The first order of business was a funeral, however, so at least some time could be given to grief. He knew it would not be nearly enough time, and thought that many of the crew would feel the same.

"Cullins…" he started weakly, before he firmed up his voice, buttressing his words with a hidden well of strength that the grief gave him. "Start collecting the bodies that the sea didn't rob us of, we can't be lettin' the dead go without final rights." He said, stronger than before, but still with a broken edge to his voice. The young man nodded solemnly; his was not an enviable task, but not one he would begrudge for his fallen comrades.

Bootstrap looked over at the Essandra, Jack's final prize. It was funny how such a grand ship didn't seem worth it. A thought occurred to him as he looked with half glazed eyes.

"And Cullins… them too. They were no doubt honorable men, even if we were the ones they were fighting." Bootstrap said with a nod to the empty vessel. The ship was eerie, the scars of the battle covered it, and her lower sails were in tatters, as if she had suddenly become a ghost ship.

Cullins looked questionably at the Essandra before realizing that Bootstrap had the right of it. He nodded, and moved back through the crowd of dejected pirates, pulling out a few men to help him along the way.

The entire crew looked more hopeless than they had at any time during the storm. Jack's loss had hit them hard; his knowledge of the sea, his fair hand, his luck, and even his drunken swagger would be sorely missed. Jack had been half mad, they knew from experience, but never had a man led such an enchanted existence, riding the wings of luck from one encounter to the next as if sailing the trade winds. A man of who strange and fantastic stories would always be told, some of them exaggerated, and others not even saying the half of what really happened to the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow.

He had been a legend of his time, and then the sea had taken him. It turned out he was mortal after all, and the ocean's depths had swallowed him with no more difficulty than any other.

But no matter how harsh the reality that faced them, it seemed wrong to them that he had perished in such a manner. Everyone had always known how Jack would die, not on the gallows, nor the point of a sword, for these things had already happened to him, and he had survived. In their hearts they had always felt that he would die with his ship, for he had sworn to himself, his crew, and his Pearl, that that would be the way of it. But now, his words had been undone, and his final promise broken, and it was this more than anything else, that caused them grief.

"I'll take a tally of them who's missin'." Anamaria offered tiredly. Bootstrap shook his head.

"No, after wrestlin' with that storm for a day and a night, you're going to take it easy. Farret can do the tally." He told the bosun. Actually, as Bosun, it should have been her to take up command after it was discovered Jack was gone, but Bootstrap, numb from the storm and now grief, had forgotten. To his credit, she had not said anything about it, indicating that it was not an issue that needed to be addressed. Later, when the crew moved on and elected a new captain, she would probably be chosen, in essence completing one of Jack's last unfulfilled promises, but for now, Bootstrap was by default the acting captain because he had stepped up.

Bootstrap looked at the crew, most of who were standing with hollow eyes gazing at their feet or at the water, or anywhere else that offered blank thoughtless solitude. He had only begun to become acquainted with this new crew, but he knew that at heart they were good men, better by far than Jack's first crew, himself included.

He looked around, and saw far too many faces missing. Where was Sully, whose stoic patience and quick hands were the bane of any vermin that snuck aboard? What of David, a man who had once gotten so drunk he had kissed a chicken because his mates told him it was a whore? Where too was the incorrigible Irishman, 'Well Red' Sean, who hated books, but had a crop of hair so red and unruly that he constantly appeared as if someone had set his head alight? And where was Jack Sparrow, who had promised his crew to one day see them to the far side of the Moon and back?

So many missing, so many that would never haul line, never return to their well deserved bunks at the end of a hard day, never again sail with hearts set for the Horizon.

The horizon… that mysterious yet mellifluous line that had encompassed all that Jack stood for. Jack Sparrow's entire existence could be explained in the horizon, if you could ever find it. Bill wondered if Jack had finally found it, if even now the captain was sailing about in an after life entirely of his own devising, for surely Jack would not allow himself to spend eternity in a place as mundane as hell.

The thought brought a sad smile to his face; being a dead man, he knew only too well the nature of the after life, and it was not something you could escape. But if ever there was a man that could, it would be Jack Sparrow.

TBC

------------------------------------

A/N: Well, this concludes the last chapter I'll be writing on land, in a week I will be shipping out on the Lady Washington. I have to admit I regard the trip with no small trepidation, the horror stories I've heard about her vomit inducing capabilities worry me, even though I have a notoriously strong stomach. But still, it's a tall ship, and serving aboard her will be an honor.

I grew up in Westport WA and the Lady docks in Aberdeen, which is just a few miles away, for winter repairs. I've grown up watching that ship, (I could probably tell you every single movie she's appeared in, from star trek generations to Pirates of the Caribbean) and it will be a bit of a culmination of a dream for me.

I will keep writing, however, (thank the gods for laptops!) but you will probably not see another chapter till summers out, as my access to the internet will be nonexistent. Unfortunately, this means that I will be finishing this story after the new movie comes out, and for any one who has watched the trailers, you will know that this movie will disprove my suppositions about Bootstrap, Norrington, and probably even Anamaria. So this story will, in effect, become an alternate reality story, even though I was writing this before the debut of the second movie. (Ah, who doesn't love Canon?)

Can't complain though, truth be told, I can't wait till the movie comes out, it looks so interesting! Being the pirate obsessed freak I am, extrapolations on the images I have seen so far have even begun appearing in my dreams. (this is more than a little disturbing, for I am of the firm opinion that no one should be so obsessed with something that it has been appearing in their dreams on more than three occasions)

Anyway, when I come back, there will probably be a flood of new chapters, accompanied by a new disclaimer at the beginning stating the discrepancies between this story and the newly evolved pirates universe.

Gods, I can really rant, cant I? so I will conclude this authors note and short term goodbye with one final thought - **I'M GOING SAILING!!!!!!**

Signed sedately,

Sirval the soon to be heavily sunburned

(P.S, please review, I'll need some heavy duty feedback to keep me writing for three months without an update. And yes, I will get a chance to read them before I leave.)


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter eight

There was a stunned silence that hung between the two girls, as Amber paused in her story telling to allow the effect to sink in. Moments passed as Racheal stared at Amber in disbelief.

"That was horrible! Why Elizabeth? And I thought you said Jack Sparrow couldn't die?" she said incredulously. Amber looked pleased with herself for having elicited such a response from her companion.

"Perhaps if you had kept telling the story, this wouldn't have happened." Amber said coyly.

"Don't give me that, you practically commandeered the story after I had them winning." She said with a dry tone. She wasn't angry at Amber so much as mildly annoyed. Amber shrugged.

"You were making it too easy." She said.

"So you're saying that Jack and Elizabeth died because I made the battle too easy?"

"I'm saying nothing of the sort; I'm only saying that what happened, occurred because that's how the story goes. Not all stories have happy endings…"

"But come, the stories not finished, and there are several matters that have yet to be resolved." She said, before Rachael could point out that she had not said a single thing that made any sense, and began to spin the tail once again, dropping them back into a world that seemed much darker now that Racheal realized that not even archetypes like Jack Sparrow were exempt from the rules of life and death.

------------------

The bleak sun overlooked the mercurial Caribbean waters, which just a few hours ago had been a tormented swath of twenty foot swells. Now all was calm, and the only hint of the violent storm lay to the south west, a dark gray line just above the horizon.

For all the suns gleaming, it was not as welcome as it could have been, even for a crew that had just survived the terrible storm. To them, the day was blighted and overcast with the pall of loss that surrounded them.

The funeral was a solemn but simple affair, as was the case with all rites at sea. Cullins, who was deemed to have a suitably resounding tone to his voice, was reading off the names of all the crew who had been lost. When somebody had seen the owner of a name die, that name was accompanied by a description of his death, if not, it was simply said of him 'lost at sea'. Far too many men were lost at sea, denying his mates any true sort of closure as to the nature of his death.

Most tragic of all perhaps, was that the name 'Jack Sparrow' was accompanied by these simple words; simple words that would never be enough to describe the captain of the Pearl. Deep in his mind, Bootstrap hoped perhaps that Jack heard them wherever it was that he now lay in repose, and would be so angered that his death was not exaggerated upon, that he would return from the grave and tell them exactly what they were supposed to say about him.

It did not happen however, and so the morose proceedings continued uninterrupted. Name after name was committed to the depths, without even a body to accompany it, for the storm had already claimed them.

"Elizabeth Swann, Governess, wife, and mother to be. Lost with her child at sea." Cullins intoned, but Will was not there to hear it, he rested below, grieving in solitude and darkness. Mayhap he thought that if he did not allow himself this small amount of closure that perhaps his wife would somehow return, as if by not admitting it to himself, it would somehow cease to be true.

Bootstrap knew better, though. He could feel the prickle of tears at the corner of his eyes. He had promised himself he would walk among the living for at least long enough to see his grandchild born, but now it would never be. His daughter in law had had such spirit, too, and he had known that she would have taken care of his son, but now she was gone, and he was very much afraid that his son was contemplating quitting this world for the next. There was nothing he could do though, he was sure that any attempt at consoling the boy would backfire.

The funeral went on as the crew, still exhausted, stood in silence. Some men wept, salt tears running tracks down beaten and weathered faces, others internalized their grief, standing rigid as they bit back their tears. Despite the tears threatening to tumble down his cheeks, Bootstrap stood silently, looking on sadly as Cullins reached the end of his list and moved on to names who still had bodies to be surrendered to the ocean.

Anamaria, looking pale and fraught, nonetheless remained silent throughout. It seemed as if it was an effort to make herself watch as each body, stitched up in his old hammock with a bit of lead, was placed on a board and upended gently to slide with a final splash to the sea.

Gibbs was unashamedly tearing, though the stoic look on his face would not indicate it to be so if not for the evidence running tracks on his already salt etched face.

Finally the last man was at rest. Ninety-six men, one woman, and an unborn child dead, not counting the men laid to rest from the Essandra. Over a third of the Pearls crew lay dead, going on to what ever after life they so believed in.

That was the key to life after death, Bootstrap had learned; you went to the place you knew in your heart you deserved to go, whether that place be Heaven, Hell, or some heathens Hades.

Jack's crew had royally confused the afterlife, which normally molded itself to a single souls psyche at a time. With so many members of his crew that had varying beliefs, it had tried to accommodate them all, and Bootstrap knew that Jack had planned it that way.

Thinking of the mad genius his friend had been, Bootstrap was once again overwhelmed by the loss; perhaps they would meet again if he were to return to the underworld, but what good would that do? Jack was very much a creature that needed to be alive, and those that where alive here would have no benefit from it, they needed him here, not in the next life.

The single fact remained, Jack was gone, and everyone would have to come to terms with that, even Bill. He couldn't just drop everything and go back to hell, even if he wanted to, he had an obligation to see the Pearl through, and he knew he had to be there for Will as well.

Around him, the crew had already dispersed, going to their chores as if lead filled their boots. Gibbs passed close to him, on his way to the helm. The old salt was shaking his head and muttering the name 'Lylith' under his breath, occasionally interspersed with rhetorical inquiries asking were she was.

Men were in the rigging, taking down the tattered fore course, and sending the ripped canvas carefully to the deck, were it would be stowed in the hold. Everything on a ship could be recycled, even torn canvas, later it might be used to repair small holes in the intact sails, or cut up and made into clothing.

On the deck, men prepared the new sail, making it ready for the crew above to bend on to the yard arm. Slowly, the sail was replaced, and the canvas was unfurled. Bootstrap gave the order to let fly the rest of her sails as well; they would have to make best speed to the nearest island for repairs.

The new sail billowed with un-faded sable, sharply contrasting the faded and beaten sails that flew alongside it. It was a poignant reminder of the hardship they had just endured, and it ironically symbolized the discordant note that stung through all their hearts.

The Pearl, pounded and weary, nonetheless sped through the water, though she fought the helmsman's hand as she never had before.

Glittering sun gave way to sparkling moon as the day passed in an epoch, and still the crew did not see the beautiful weather they had been graced with. They only had thought for their grief, and how suddenly the world was a very heavy and woeful place to live. Gone was the zest for life that normally accompanied such men, and Bootstrap hoped that this loss, at least, was a passing thing.

-------------below--------------

Will sat disconsolately at a small table, deep in the hold of the Black Pearl. Before him on the table lay a heavy pistol at his right hand, and a glittering bottle of ambrosia on his left. He slumped in his seat, contemplating both morosely.

The hull around him groaned from the damage it had sustained, and in the background a steady trickle could be heard, as an un-repaired hole leaked water steadily into the bilges. The atmosphere seemed heavy with sorrow and loss as the Pearl made its limping way to the nearest island for repairs.

The crew did not disturb him, as they were all elsewhere, dealing with their losses in their own manner. The only other living being near him was Mistlemyr, who lay curled asleep in his lap as he absentmindedly ran his fingers through her blue gray fur.

The dim hold was lit only by a single lantern, which swung on its peg ponderously, causing the shadows in the room to move as if they were alive. Back and forth it swung, making the physical world almost as confusingly vague as Will's internal world.

The Pearl swayed on the sea, seemingly bemoaning the loss of her captain, even as Will contemplated consigning himself to oblivion for the loss of Elizabeth.

He had never imagined a world without Elizabeth; even when she had been above his reach, he knew she would always be there, tantalizingly at the edge of his grasp. And then she had chosen him; against all custom and propriety, she had married a common blacksmith. He had become so besotted with the realization of his long repressed love that he had regarded her as a goddess, a creature whose beauty would never cease to grace the world. Or perhaps that wasn't the right way of thinking of it; he had regarded her as a goddess before, and now she was so much a part of him that she was his world, his meaning for existence.

"I'm pathetic." He said bitterly. "How could someone like me ever have expected that such a radiant woman would be mine forever?" he muttered into the darkness.

"Because she loved you." An echoing voice said softly as Mary Reed coalesced out of the darkness. In the flickering lantern light, she could almost be said to appear real, or perhaps it was because Will felt so close to death himself.

The ghost regarded him curiously for a moment before seemingly taking a seat across from him. Wearily, he looked at her.

"Not meaning to be rude, but I would rather be alone." He said brokenly.

"I just came to say I was sorry." She said.

"There was nothing you could have done for Elizabeth." He told her.

"I know. But you misunderstand me, I'm sorry we could not join the battle sooner." She explained.

Will thought for a moment, forcing himself to think back to the battle, before he had lost Elizabeth. It seemed so long ago. He dimly recalled the battle, and realized she was right, Jack had asked them to join the battle, but they had not come until nearly the end.

"Okay, but it's not me that this apology is owed to."

"No, it's owed to the captain, and he's gone. However, I feel that you deserve some of the apology as well; perhaps if we had come sooner, the battle would have been done quicker and we might have weathered the storm better. Elizabeth and the captain might not have been lost to the serpent." She said gravely. Will shook his head.

"I doubt it." He told her, dismissing the subject. Reed paused though, as if there was something more.

"There is one other thing you should know." She added. "Something held us back."

"What?" he asked not really caring, but at the same time curious as to what could possibly stop a ghost. When he had seen her in battle she had seemed fairly unstoppable.

"I wish I knew." She replied, and even though Will thought he had used up all of his fears and emotions on his grief, a small chill ran down his spine at the words.

After a heavy silence, it became obvious that Will had once again slipped back into his despair. She was just about to leave when she saw the items on the table in front of him.

"That's an interesting combination of items." She remarked with a gesture, indicating the Pistol and the ambrosia.

"I'm deciding which eternity I should condemn myself to." He said without looking up.

"Eternity is an awfully long time, both here and there." The ghost told him noncommittally.

"Is it long enough to numb the pain?" he asked her, grief blurring his eyes.

"Not really." She said quietly. Something in the tone of her voice caught his attention, and he looked up at her, momentarily swimming up out of his own grief to realize that she too held a deep pain.

"You sound sad." He said, phrasing it as a statement, but meaning it as a question. She was silent a moment, as if debating whether or not to lay her own grief bare.

"I was pregnant when I died. Did you now that?" she asked through a veneer of a carefree attitude. Will took a moment to digest this information, and then his face slowly clouded with rage.

"You mean they hung you while you were with child?!" he began, but she made calming motions with her hands.

"No, nothing like that. I pled the Belly, and spent the next six months rotting in a prison cell, before a fever claimed me. I thought perhaps as I died that I would at last be with my child and husband together, but I was wrong. I never could find him, no matter how I searched, and my child went to another place entirely." She said by way of explanation.

"I'm sorry…" Will said quietly.

"Don't be sorry for me, I've done that plenty enough for myself, and you've got enough grief on your mind now. I suppose the point I'm trying to get across is, that pistols not goin' to be your solution, and neither is that bottle. Give yourself a few mortal years before you decide you want the immortal ones." She said.

There was a long silence as Will contemplated her words. At last he gave a defeated sigh, and rose from his seat, picking up Mistlemyr and placing her on his empty chair. He ran a hand through his tousled hair and shuffled out of the room, leaving the table, and the eternities it offered, behind.

For a long time afterward Reed and Mistlemyr sat there in the flickering light, the cat watching the ghost, and the ghost looking at nothing in particular. It was Mistlemyr who broke the silence first.

"I notice you lied to him." the cat said. Mary looked at the blue tinged cat sharply.

"He didn't need to know that I found Robert. He needed an excuse not to die, not an incentive to hasten his arrival to the river Styx. His wife undoubtedly wants it this way." She said.

"Just as well." the cat agreed. "If he had gone for the pistol, I would have seen to it that it would have been a month before he could use his hand again."

-------------------

The Black Pearl swept through the sea like a court lady at a ball; winsome, willful, and like all women left unattended by their partners, tinged with tragedy. The crew, usually quick to put losses behind them, found themselves lingering over what had happened. It was even more difficult than normal this time around, perhaps because so many hearts had been broken.

As they tried to make best speed to the Mala keys, the nearest grouping of wooded islands, they found that the Pearl fought the helm at every turn. This was not so unusual in and of itself, a wounded ship could develop a variety of quirks until repaired; it was that the Pearl tried to point towards the same direction no matter what her current tack.

Always she would try to point due west south west, and while it was true that they were heading in a generally western direction, the fact that she continued to point west south west in a directly WSW wind was slightly eerie to the crew.

Even with this they might have made better time if not for the straggling and wounded Essandra. Anamaria had determined that she was worth saving, but only just barely. The French barque listed heavily in the water, and she sometimes rolled alarmingly, as if making ready to keel over and die.

The bosun found that she had her work cut out for her. Not only did she have to see to the Pearl, but she also had to keep ahead of repairs on the Essandra, always just one step ahead of having the ship sink altogether.

With the crew decreased by the battle, they were short handed all around, and everyone one was feeling stressed and world weary.

It was more than this too; the appearance of specters increased; a fifth and strangely familiar form began appearing, of which the four ghosts new nothing of. Whispers among the crew began; the overall fear was that this new spirit was the French noblewoman, who had been found dead with her husband below decks, apparently murdered by their own crew.

Nobody knew why this had been done, but the overall opinion was something dark and awful had come to pass during the storm.

The rumor might have been confirmed, if not for the fact that the new apparition looked nothing like the woman they had found dead on the Essandra.

She was sighted several times, by various crewmembers, and always at night. A statuesque woman in a glittering sheath of stars would flicker into existence for a brief moment and then fade from sight, startling any who saw her.

Those that saw her all remembered different details about her appearance, but on one point they would always agree; she was pointing at something out over the horizon. For some reason, though everyone recounted a different appearance to her, she always seemed vaguely familiar, like a relative that you weren't always aware of, but who was always there for you.

It was unnerving for everyone when they saw her, for they felt as if they were seeing something obvious, but missing its importance. Only one person suspected the true nature of the specter, but after a fierce internal debate, did not tell anyone.

During the arduous journey, Will was confronted with the uncomfortable notion of what he wanted to do. With the captain and his wife dead, there almost seemed no point in going back to retake Port Royal. Indeed, the means to do so seemed rather limited at the moment as well; he didn't have the authority that Elizabeth did, he couldn't guarantee the pirate's their rewards at the end.

There was also the question of whether Norrington would just have him hung for consorting with pirates if he ever showed up again. Without Elizabeth, there would be no reason for the man to even pretend to like him any more. Norrington was a good man, but a fellow's honor could only go so far before petty jealousy took over. Likely the commodore would blame Will for Elizabeth's death, and moreover, Will was not entirely sure that he didn't blame himself for it.

In truth, the loss was so over whelming that Will had no idea what to do with himself. His sleep was troubled with images of Elizabeth being snatched from his arms by the angry sea, and his waking hours were so clouded with grief, that there were entire portions of his day in which he had no idea what he had been doing. He wandered the decks of the Black Pearl aimlessly, completely unaware of his surroundings. The crew of the Pearl gave him a wide berth, not even speaking to him unless he spoke to them first, which he was not often inclined to do. They did not even ask him to do his chores, so cursed and wretched did he seem, that they were afraid it was going to rub off on them.

Upon reflection, Will's entire life seemed to be that of a Jonah, one loss after another; his father, his mother, his wife… his child.

He had been the captain's friend though, as well as the fact that his father was now acting captain, so the crew kept there whispers of bad luck to just that, whispers of curses in the dark.

For three days they traveled the lonely sea; wounds festered, both real and mental, and they patched and repaired the ship to the best of their abilities. The Pearl had taken too much damage for a refit at sea, and so when the call of 'land ho' sounded out, a general sigh of relief hushed through the crew.

The Mala keys were a small and generally uninhabited set of islands; thick with vegetation, they were ideal for obtaining any sort of raw materials a ship might need. The islands were relatively untouched by human hand, largely because it was considered bad luck to sail through the Mala keys. Gibbs of course, had pointed this out the minute Bill proposed it as their heading, but the only nearer haven was one hundred miles further, and against the wind.

So though old stories told of ships disappearing off of blank stretches of channel amidst the Mala keys, the Pearl and her crew risked it. Besides, one might argue that the Pearl was a superstition unto herself, and was thus impervious to other forms of bad luck. After looking back on what the Pearl, if not her captain, had just survived, Gibbs was almost inclined to agree with that notion.

The anchor was set, signifying what was to be the start of a long stretch of repairs. Then the boats were lowered away, taking Anamaria and a small group of the men to help her, to the island to find what she would need to repair the Pearl. Men bustled about the repairs, if not quite invigorated by the sight of land, then at least cheered slightly. The deck was alive with the sound of hammers, saws, and grumbled profanities. All hands were busy with one maintenance task or another, and the need for a lookout was minimal; there was far too much too do and the chances of anything attacking them amidst the Mala keys was almost nonexistent.

There was quite a bit of damage to repair as well, on both the Pearl and the Essandra, there was serious damage to the hull integrity. The Bosun, when she returned with materials and a few provisions, could be heard grumbling to herself.

"Always with the broadsides. Bloody useless things. If he had wanted to capture the damn ship he should have tried maneuvering a bit more…" and on it went in other and similar strains. To hear her speaking of the dead in such a manner shocked some of the crew, but others just shrugged it off as her manner of dealing with the loss.

The Essandra was by far the worst off. Most of her lower rigging had to be entirely replaced, she was missing both anchors, and the cracked hull planks on her starboard beam where her sister ship had been slammed into her would have to be reinforced, and in the worst cases entirely replaced.

And all of this had to be done under the harsh eye of Anamaria, who seemed twice as bad as usual, some might even use the word cruel. Many of the crew took this ill nature to be a sign that she and the captain had in fact been an item, and that she was driven to an angry grief over his death.

Those that knew better were puzzled, however, for though Anamaria could at times be a mean eyed task master, the harsh treatment she was dealing out was beyond what even she should consider bad. Anamaria was known for getting things done with a harsh tongue, not a cruel lash.

She only used the lash once, but once was enough. A pirate crew was a democracy, not a dictatorship, and many of the crew men had left the navy to avoid such things.

Unsure about were she had found the thing, Bill took it away from her and threw it overboard, wondering what she was thinking. He would have been perfectly content to stand down and give her the Pearl before, but now he wasn't so sure. Was this just a faze or would the behavior continue? He wasn't going to give the Pearl to a captain who would be mutinied against.

Unfortunately the time was rapidly approaching when the official captain would have to be chosen, and there were very few likely candidates. Any man could put himself forward, but the likelihood of being chosen relied a great deal on support.

There were only three real candidates; Anamaria, Bootstrap, and Gibbs, and Bootstrap had no intention of running. He was dead, and thus had no business captaining a ship of those who were still alive.

That left a choice between Gibbs and Anamaria.

If asked two day ago, Bootstrap would have suggested Anamaria in a heartbeat; Gibbs knew what he was about, but he didn't have the force of personality necessary to command men. Anamaria, despite being a woman, had that important charisma, unfortunately she seemed to have turned over a new and very bad leaf.

Bill was suddenly put in mind of a Shakespearian play; '_Titus Andronicus'._ On the one hand the good and virtuous (well, maybe virtuous was too strong a word to be used to describe Gibbs). On the other side the charismatic bastard. (again maybe too strong a word, but close enough an analogy).

An involuntary shudder ran down Bill's spine, he had no desire to play Titus, he didn't have twenty four sons to lose, he only had one, and Will had already suffered enough.

He found himself wondering what cruel twist of fate should put him in the position of having to find someone other than Jack to captain the Pearl.

To calm his thoughts Bootstrap took a lap of the Pearls deck, looking around at the surrounding islands. On the starboard side lay the center island of the Mala keys; a serene looking little paradise with dense tropical jungle. On the beach lay the Essandra, her careened hull gleaming dully in the sunlight as several men worked to repair her.

To the port side lay the arm of the islands large harbor, nicely sheltering the pirates from any prying eyes. Though it was unlikely that anyone would be passing through these islands due to their reputation, it was still better to be in a sheltered harbor than an open channel.

The Pearls bow pointed straight at the mouth of the harbor, and after a casual check, Bootstrap was unsurprised to learn the she was pointing exactly west south west, slightly worried, yes, but not surprised.

Looking straight out from the head of the ship, Bill tried to discern what she was striving for, and though he knew it was foolish to expect anything, he was still disappointed when he saw nothing but rocky shoals across the channel.

He continued gazing at the shoals for a long time, lost in thought. As he mulled through recent events in his mind, his eyes unfocused. Why was Anamaria acting so strangely? She wanted a ship, why was she hurting her chances for captaincy by being needlessly cruel?

His unfocused eyes continued staring at the mountain, and the sounds around him-

Bootstrap blinked, clearing his vision. Mountain? But it was gone, there was nothing there. His clear eyes saw nothing but rocky shoals.

Shaking his head he turned and walked back to the stern. He had enough stress without illusionary mountains.

--------------

Repairs continued for two days, and despite being short handed, the work was being done at a phenomenal pace, especially on the Essandra.

By the end of the second full day, she was structurally sound enough to be launched once again. Almost as soon as the Essandra's keel was free of land, Anamaria had men in the rigging, swaying up new yard arms for most of her lower sails and bending new sails on.

It was astounding how much work had been done in three short days; the Pearl was almost completely sound, though she did still have that eerie tendency to point towards the harbor mouth against the current. And the Essandra would be finished in just a few hours.

Bootstrap could no longer push off the inevitable; he would have to call the muster to elect the new captain. It was something that had been weighing on his mind heavily for the last three days. The crew was getting restless, and Bootstrap himself was being driven slowly to distraction the longer he put it off. For better or for worse he would have to call the meeting.

With everybody assembled on deck, Bootstrap realized that the crew had still not entirely recovered from the battle and its losses. Still there was the empty and shattered feel of something that wasn't entirely _there_. The looks in their eyes were hollow, and when he looked into Ana's eyes, he shuddered; there was something fundamentally wrong in her eyes. There was at one moment a plea for help, and then the next a cool look of indifference, neither of which where traits very commonly found in Ana's eyes. He wondered if she had been injured in her brain during the battle.

The crew was looking at him expectantly, however, and so he reminded himself that it wouldn't matter to him who got elected as long as it wasn't him, and pushed his musings away.

He started simply, cutting to the heart of the matter without mincing words.

"The captain is dead, and I have no intention of taking over. It is up to you to elect a new captain." He said solemnly.

The words almost broke his heart; never had he imagined having to find a new captain for Jack's beloved ship

"Who stands for captain?" Anamaria asked the crew. There were murmurs and low negatives, a few who stood forward and presented themselves, but no-one with any real support. Bootstrap looked at Gibbs and then at Anamaria, both of whom knew that they would be the primary candidates.

Gibbs looked uncomfortable, but resolved. It was clear that he had never had any ambition for power. Anamaria's face was unreadable at that point, her dark face as inscrutable as a cliff. Finally after an interminable pause, Gibbs spoke.

"I stand for captain." He said resignedly.

"Can't bloody well do that if the captains still alive. Or is it to be another mutiny?" a familiar voice said from the foremast channel. Collectively the crew turned their attention from the stern to the bow.

"Jack!?"

-----------------------

A/N: if you the reader has stopped bouncing around with joy enough to read this, I have a few thoughts I would like to share with you. First of all, you will now note that this has become a bit of an alternate reality, mainly with the way I portray bootstrap, and also how I intend to portray Norrington (whenever he decides to make an appearance) note that Norrington will be the same upstanding gentleman he was in the first movie, not the devilish rogue he became in the second. Please understand that I love how the character grew in the second movie, but when I started dreaming this particular story up, he was still the commodore, and I still have need of that aspect of James Norrington.

Another thing, in no way was I pressured into bringing Jack back, I have been planning this since the beginning, so please don't think that.

It's also interesting, in a scary kind of way, to note the similarities between my story and the second movie. In no way is this intentional; I have been writing this for a considerable amount of time, long before even the slightest gleaming of DMC 's plot was coming out, so please do not accuse me of plagiarism of any kind, it would make me sad and shriveled on the inside. Nonetheless, I will continue writing this story exactly as I planned it, and the similarities do continue into the unwritten stuff as well.

You have been warned.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

"Jack!?" Rachael said incredulously "but you said he was dead, and you're the story teller!"

"I never once said he was dead out of context of the stories perspective."

"Wait a second… what?"

"I didn't say he was dead except when I was describing a character's thoughts." Amber replied.

"I give up, you are incapable of making any sense whatsoever. Just continue." Rachael said with a resigned wave of her hand.

"It will be three in the morning before I'm done you know." Amber said.

"I don't care; we started this, we might as well finish it."

-------------

"Jack!" the cry was unanimous and heartfelt throughout the crew, and even the Pearl herself seemed to brighten. Gibbs was the only one to notice as a wisp of light rose from the helms wheel, buzzed across the deck to the foredeck and dove over the bow, disappearing into the figure head of the woman holding the bird. Gibbs looked from the figure head to Jack and back, at last recognizing the woman that had appeared to them, always pointing to the horizon, just as the Pearl had; to west south west. Gibbs eyes went wide with this eerie realization, and quickly unscrewing the cab to his flask, he took a deep, long, drink of the burning liquid inside.

The crew wasn't quite sure what was going on; perhaps Jack had returned from the grave like Bootstrap, or maybe he had never left and had this past week been testing their loyalty, or maybe he had pulled off yet another miraculous escape from certain death, as he had on so may other occasions. All they knew was that he was standing there on the fore mast channel, clutching the shrouds and looking every inch a legend.

"But you died!" Anamaria exclaimed. Jack smiled, a wry twist of his mouth.

"It's amazing how often I hear that." He said. The crew wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, so after an expectant moment he gestured over the side.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Help them aboard." He barked as he stepped nimbly from the shrouds to the deck. The crew, puzzled, took a collective step to look over the starboard rail.

There, bobbing on the water like so many minnows, were at last fifteen small reed boats, filled to the bursting with bronze skinned young men, the like of which the pirates had not often seen. Only some of the older salts had any idea of where these young men came from, but it was impossible, for Egypt was thousands of miles away.

They all had white starched kilts, and wore more kohl on their clean tanned faces than even Jack. They were armed as well; all had strangely curved bows on their backs, along with quivers bursting with wickedly barbed arrows. More than a few wore oddly shaped swords at their belt, though not all.

The pirates did not take too long in their gawking, however, and soon several rope ladders had been secured and tossed to them. The first aboard after Jack, however, was not one of these strange natives, but Elizabeth, who climbed up the sides as if she didn't have an infant tied in a sling around her shoulders at all.

"Oh, by the way, you're a father. Just so you know." Jack said belatedly to Will.

Will, at a loss for words at the appearance of Jack, had been waiting with baited breath, hardly daring to hope that Elizabeth had survived as well. At her appearance, he lost all semblance of coherent thought, barely registering Jack's words. Crossing the deck, he was almost instantly at her side, sweeping her up in an embrace that was so sudden; Elizabeth hardly knew what was upon her. She buried her face in his neck, breathing in his comforting scent.

After a long moment in which Elizabeth felt her heart fairly glowing, they separated far enough for Will to see the child Elizabeth held.

"What's his name?" Will asked with a tender expression on his face, brushing aside a few soft curls from his sons face.

"Mathew." She said.

"Mathew." he repeated. He looked into her eyes, and the depth of emotions the welled in his heart were impossible to describe.

"I only wish I could have been there." He said softly.

"I wish you could have too, but don't worry, the mermaids took care of me." She said. He gave her that quizzical look he was so good at.

"Mermaids?"

"It's a rather long story." She said modestly.

"Yes, a long story that we don't exactly have the time for, savvy?" Jack said, interrupting their reunion. He had managed to reacquire his hat and coat, and was strapping on his sword belt even as he spoke.

"Are we in a hurry?" Will asked.

"I don't know, you tell me; I'm not the one bribing my way half way across the Caribbean trying to get Port Royal back. And aside from that, when the Egyptians find out their 'gods' escaped, we want to be as far away as possible." He finished with the belt, and gave his at one last adjustment before he was satisfied with his appearance. It was as if he had never gone anywhere.

"Gods?" Will asked.

"Yes gods. As dear Miss Swann said, it's a long story. A _very_ long story, savvy? Now as soon as soon as all of Elizabeth's devoted bodyguards are aboard I want to be under way." Jack said. He looked around, assessing the Pearl's condition and her surroundings. He seemed quite pleased with what he saw.

"Anamaria, you have done an outstanding job with her, I don't know what I'd be doing without you. The Essandra too, it's good to see she made it through the storm." He said. Ana smiled, a small smile that showed she knew she had done a good job, but appreciated the praise nonetheless.

"You know that ship you promised me…" Anamaria said, with a meaningful look, not attempting in the least to be subtle.

"The Essandra's yours to command, but I'm going to need her to get into Port Royal, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to suffer me devastating good looks for a little while longer." He said with a grin.

Her response was to look at him with a twist to her mouth and a raised eyebrow.

"Do I get a prize crew, or do ye expect me to try and sail it after the Pearl by me self?" she said sarcastically.

"You mean you're not immortal and omnipotent?" he said in mock surprise. She shook her head, but Jack noticed a queer look in her eyes. He filed it away in the back of his mind under 'might be important', but out loud he said. "And all these years you've had me going…" he muttered

Jack, noticing that all of Elizabeth's guards had been brought aboard, quickly changed tacks, from small pleasantries to orders.

"Anamaria, take twenty men, and make the Essandra ready to sail. Be sharp about it, or there may be unpleasant business with the locals." He said and turning from her faced Gibbs.

"Mr. Gibbs, congratulations, you've just been promoted. All hands to make sail if you please."

"All hands to make sail! Hands aloft to unfurl! Stand by stations! Hands to the capstan!" Gibbs shouted out, calling the idling crew to their duties.

Men rushed about, and to an unpracticed eye, for a few moments it seemed as if chaos reigned, men racing fore, aft and aloft, but the pirates knew what they were about, and soon men were standing ready at sailing stations and the capstan, waiting for the order. The men aloft raced about their business, it being a matter of pride to them how quickly they could make the sails ready.

Anamaria, with her twenty men readying the longboat, lowered it to the water, and then disembarked, pulling hard for the Essandra, so as not to fall behind in preparations. With the return of Jack, the crew had put her cruelty behind them, assuring themselves that she would be right as rain now that the captain was back. They did not hold any fear of putting themselves in her hands. However, as soon as the longboat was a distance from the Pearl, her face became neutral once more, and she seemed more pensive than anything else.

As soon as Jack noted that Anamaria and her crew had boarded the Essandra and were making ready, he turned to Gibbs

"Weigh anchor, and as soon as it's clear of the bottom, get us underway. Our Egyptian friends may not have gun powder, but there are a lot of them." Jack said quietly.

"Haul away on the capstan!" Gibbs called, and immediately the great round capstan began turning, the men pushing as hard as they could. The first few turns went by easily as the slack was hauled out, but then it began to turn slower and slower. The line around the barrel tightened until it hummed with tension, the men straining to take half a step.

Harder and harder they strained, pushing in rhythm with the shanty being piped out by Strip, the enterprising young cabin boy. Finally the great anchor gave way, and progress resumed on the capstan; the going was slow, but they were now moving at a steady pace.

As the men aloft did their job, the sails began dropping and billowing into the wind, waiting to be set. It was as if the Pearl was fidgeting, ruffling her feathers, impatient to take flight.

"Just a moment, love." Jack muttered with a loving touch on the rich ebony rail.

Black canvas fluttered high on the wind, like a court lady would flutter her fan, and as the ladie's fan could mean many things, so too could the flutter of the Pearls sails. Jack however, seemed to be able to discern a meaning, and merely smiled.

The moment was just that; a moment, and as soon as Gibbs reported the anchor was high enough to clear the bar of the small harbor, he was all business once again.

Will wondered at it, looking at the five score men Jack and Elizabeth had brought with them. They were milling about the main deck, looking with sharp interest at everything around them. What had the two been up two? Every time Elizabeth disappeared with Jack, they managed to turn up once again at the most unexpected, or as Jack would say, 'opportune' moment.

Elizabeth was becoming far too much like Jack. To a certain degree, it was endearing, but he couldn't help but wonder, where would it end? Elizabeth was a lady, and while he loved that wild part of her that allowed her to love a simple blacksmith, she was also now the governess of Port Royal, or would be just as soon as they got it back. It was amazing how, now that he knew she was alive, his purpose had once again been restored.

With a word, courses dropped, topsails were sheeted home, as were t'gallants and royals, headsails raced up their stays, and within moments the Pearl had burst into full sail. The wind sang joyously through her rig, strong and steady, and the Pearl leapt swiftly towards the harbor mouth.

"That's more like it" Jack said fondly, caressing the spokes of the helms wheel. "I should make a lanyard and tie meself to you. Then maybe pirates and storms and bloody Egyptians would stop trying to remove me from your lovely decks."

Clipping out of the harbor at a steady six knots the Pearl had soon cleared the bar and was at present heading directly for the shoals across the channel.

"Ready about, Gibbs, I don't fancy getting too close to that island. There's no way of knowing what kind of nasty tricks they have on the shore for larger things than a pair of castaways washing up on the beach."

"You mean the shoals, Jack?" Gibbs asked with a puzzled brow.

"No, I mean the island."

"We're already leaving the island behind us, Jack."

"I'm not talking about the island behind us, I'm talking about the island in front of us, now, ready about, if you please."

Gibbs looked in front of them, and saw nothing but whitecaps breaking over the shallow rocks and sand, the truest definition of rocky shoals you could ever see, and even in Gibbs wide experience at sea, that in no way could be construed as an island.

Nonetheless, they would have to come about to avoid it whether it was an island or shoals, either way, it would make no difference to the Pearls deep draft.

"Ready about!" Gibbs shouted, receiving the call back of ready about from the entire crew in confirmation that they had heard. The Pearl came about even smoother than normal, due in part to the liberal amount of work Anamaria had put into the Pearls braces, and perhaps due in part to the fact that Jack was once again at the helm.

The Black Pearl swept about so quickly that there was hardly a moment when her sails were not full and drawing, and then they were speeding up the channel, leaving the islands, both the real one and the one that existed in Jacks head, swiftly astern.

Jack let out a small breath, as if they had just evaded a looming threat, and true shoals could be considered a threat, but they were never in any danger of grounding upon them. It may have been to leeward but the Pearl was a stiff and fast vessel, and she made very little leeway. There was something amiss, and Will knew there must be something behind all this talk of islands that weren't there, mermaids, Egyptians and gods. Likely another of Sparrow's grand adventures had transpired, and though there were far too many tall tales surrounding the man, Will was curious as to how Jack and Elizabeth had not only survived the sea serpent, but also the angry water, to show up a week later, in clean clothes and trailing a contingent of Egyptians in little reed boats that wouldn't possibly survive heavy seas.

Will faced Jack, full on; as if by imposing his presence upon the captain he could make him more likely to answer his questions.

"What happened out there? Nobody could have possibly survived that storm in the water with a sea serpent lurking in the depths." Will said. Jack looked at Will as if only just noticing him.

"People use that expression far too often for me to believe it. My entire life has been one great exercise in proving that the impossible is actually only improbable. 'There are more things on heaven and earth, Will, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Jack replied, looking pleased with himself for working a quote into his speech. Will didn't actually know what the quote was from, but knew it for what it was by the way Jack's voice changed while reciting it. The pirate was actually almost making sense for once in a great long while, but then he ruined his moment of lucidity by looking skyward as if struck by an idea, and saying

"Say, why don't you tell me that I can't go to the dark side of the moon?" it was said in a sarcastic tone.

"But you can't go to the dark side of the moon, Jack. It's impossible." Will said with a puzzled look on his face.

"Hah! Now I know I'll make it!"

"What?" Will said, quite befuddled by the captains non-logic

"Lad, pirates are contrary and cattish souls at heart, and the best way to get them to do something is to tell them they can't."

"So your telling me, that by telling you, you can't do something, I'm making certain you will?" Will said, his brow scrunched up as he tried to wrap his brain around the concept.

"No, no, you've got it all wrong; you've got nothing to do with it." Jack said, without further explanation. Will, his loose reasoning completely shattered, tried to figure out how this made any sense at all. Not coming up with anything, he chose the safest course one could choose when confronted with Sparrow's convoluted half thoughts; he dropped the subject, much to everyone's relief.

Suddenly realizing that they had spiraled away from the original topic, Will instead chose to press the question that Jack had so nimbly side stepped. Will was nothing if not persistent.

"You haven't answered my question Jack." He said.

"As to that, I would quite delightedly settle your curiosity, but I will not stand by someone who makes blind assumptions." Jack said, obviously trying to get a point across.

"Jack, by all accounts you should be dead. Not that I'm complaining. But I am sure that had it been anyone else cast into the storm, they would not have returned. Indeed we did lose others that day; and I don't yet see them about, unless you have them cleverly concealed beneath your hat?" there was a flash in Sparrows eye's and Will instantly knew he had gone too far in mentioning the other pirates that had been lost on that awful day.

Nothing was said for a few moments while Will pondered the best way to proceed, and Jack contemplated a murky place that could be seen lurking behind his own dark eyes. Finally Will spoke quietly.

"What happened that day after the serpent dragged you both into the sea?" he asked. Jack looked at him.

"Looking for another grand adventure? Well, an adventure it may have been, but it was no bed of roses, let me assure you…"

-------------

_The serpent would not be rid of so easily however, and in one last spiteful swing of its tail, Elizabeth was torn from Will's arms, and the line that held Jack to the ship was snapped, and together Jack and Elizabeth fell to the black ocean in which there was almost no hope of surviving, dragged down to the depths by the ireful monster._

Jack realized a moment to late that the monsters thrashing tail was coming straight for him, without even time to swing out of the way he only had time to widen his eyes before the serpents thrashing fluke collided with him, sending his world into a confused blur. For a split second, it was as if a brick wall had smashed him up against the French ships hull, and then he was falling.

Suddenly he was in the water, still being dragged down by the turbulence of the serpent as it thrashed in its attempts to break free of the ever sinking anchor tied to its neck. The world was quiet here, despite the tumultuous confusion of the water filled with writhing coils. The silence was almost deafening after the rage of the wind above.

There was a brush of sensation against his bare ankle, not sure what it was, Jack lashed out, latching onto the unfamiliar object, a dress, and in the dress, a woman. It was Elizabeth.

'_Oh, bloody hell!' _he cursed in his mind, not daring to open his mouth. Finding a limb, he gripped it with all his strength, he would be damned if he let a pregnant woman die.

They were still being dragged down, the serpent's great length twisting about and buffeting them, occasionally the two would be hit with such force that Jack was sure he would have the very breath knocked from his body, and in fact it was only by a miracle that it was not. He hoped to god that Elizabeth was as lucky.

It was all happening so fast, and in a matter of seconds after hitting the water, Jack knew that he was below the water so far that he would not be able to return to the surface unaided, let alone dragging Elizabeth up with him.

Jack was not one to give up, however, despite the hopelessness of his situation, and so he turned to the only option left to him; the serpent itself.

He readied himself as one of the massive coils threatened to bash into the two of them, and this time, when struck by the creature's massive section, he did not allow it to send them hurtling through the water, but reached out with a grasping hand, searching for any purchase at all on which to cling to the monsters smooth flanks. Scrabbling frantically, his questing hand at last found one of the heavy spines protruding from the thing's back. Instantly he was jerked into motion, desperately trying to hold on with only one hand, while the other held fast to Elizabeth.

Using a hidden reserve of strength, he pulled her up to the monster's side, hoping she was conscious and could hold on herself, for if he was forced to keep holding her as well as holding them both to the serpent, then he would likely lose both, and then all would be for naught.

Miraculously, as he pulled her close, her other hand reached out and clung fast to the serpent. But time was running out, he could only hold his breath for so long, and though he had better lung capacity than most, he doubted Miss Swann was as lucky. Lacking no other option, he left her there clinging to the spine as he turned and began to pull his way, hand over hand, towards the things neck. Hopefully she would have the sense not to let go.

He may have drowned, merely trying to reach the things neck, had he not fortunately found a handhold nearer to its head than away. As it was he was having a hard enough time of it as it was, struggling against the rush of the water, the violence of the serpent bucking about, and the rapidly increasing pressure as the sea grew heavier the farther they sank.

There was no light left, the water was too thick, and the clouds too deep in the heavens to let any ray of sun get down this far. But at last he found the line that was dragging them all down to a watery hell, found it by touch alone, and finding also that he had no dagger, having lost it when he was sent plunging into the tortured sea.

With only one hope left he remembered a time long before, a time before he was Captain of any vessel at all, let alone the Pearl. A young boy with a sailors hammock in the fo'c'sl of the Agamemnon; a merchant ship bound for Sicily. The time he had met the serpent the first time, and barely survived, but he had fared better than the rest of the crew.

Jack was not proud of what he had done that day, a scared, cornered youth, crouching in the lee of the quarterdeck break. When the serpent spotted him then, it made to strike, and quicker than could be real Jack had dodged out of the way, sinking his rig knife deep in its thick neck before running blindly to the stern. Not even thinking as he jumped to the lifeboat towing astern, and casting off the painter, not even thinking about the crew he had left to the serpent. In truth, he was not even sure if there had been anyone else left alive at that point.

Jack was not worrying about the moral implications of his actions that day, what he was trying to remember was exactly were he had landed his rig knife.

He began feeling around blindly, almost frantically in the dark. He knew the monster's head was a mere foot away, but he could not see it, and in truth, the serpent was probably a bit too distracted to notice Jack as he wrapped himself comically around the things neck, looking for a knife that he had put the over thirty years ago.

At last though, he found the knife, lodged right were he had left it so many years ago, a scale had grown over half of it, making it almost impossible to find. But his luck held true, and his desperate fingers latched on to what was left of the handle, wrenching it free of the leviathan's flesh. Praying that there was any edge left to it at all, he quickly slashed at the constricting line wrapped around its neck.

He was surprised when he felt it bite deep into the line, parting it easily.

Suddenly, the world seemed to turn end over end, as the serpent, free from the massive weight, changed velocity and direction, leveling out its path, and ribboning through the water on a horizontal path. Now all he had to do was convince it to go to the surface.

In truth he had no idea how to accomplish this. He hadn't quite gotten that far into the planning when he had set out on this course of action.

'_Alright darlin', how's about you take old Jack were he wants to go.'_ He began searching for a way to manipulate the serpent into doing what he wanted. He really had only one option, and without even really thinking about what he was doing, he untied the remainder of the life line that was still fast around is waist, found the joint of the serpents jaw and kicked inward, forcing its mouth open, and then quickly strung the line between its long fangs so that it snugged back against the hinge of its jaw.

With only seconds of air left in his burning lungs, he jerked back on the makeshift bit. With a surprised lunge the serpent began a sharp ascent, and in mere seconds they had reached the surface, breaching with a magnificent leap, Jack took the moment to draw a coughing and spluttering breath, before they were once again plunging down deep into the water.

A little less urgently this time, Jack urged it back to the surface, attempting to get it to stay there, after a few more short dives, Jack at last succeeded in persuading it to stay on the surface; mostly at least.

Every so often the enraged monster would twist violently in the water, trying to dislodge the pests clinging to its back. But at least they could breathe, and they weren't in any imminent threat of death, except from the serpent that is. Jack, upon reflection, really would have rather had a chance to plan the entire thing through, because then he might of realized that putting a bridal on a sea serpent, while sure to be a fantastic ride, was not the most intelligent of actions. Because when you thought about it, once you got on, you really couldn't get off.

And so it was. Jack had no way to get back to the Pearl, if she was even still afloat. He was safe and snug, on the back of a very large snake with very pointy teeth. There was no feasible way to disembark with out the thing eating him.

'_Oh bugger.'_

------------

A/N:

Yes I did bring Jack back, as cliché as it is, it's also who he is; Jack Sparrow can not die, at least not for good. It's just one of those facts of life.

Anyway, I know it's been ages and ages since my last update, I just wanted to apologize, I've been a bit busy having an adventure of my own, sailing on old tall ships all up and down the coast. At the moment I'm in LA working on a boat called the Exy Johnson, a brigantine. I'm her bosun and Gunner as well, and get this, you guys will love it; the Black Pearl makes port here when she's not doing filming stuff.

Of course, she's not an actual sailing vessel, just a very elaborate set, but she's real enough to fire cannon at. (Cannon is plural as well as singular, kind of like sheep and moose) So I can honestly say I fired cannon at the Black Pearl. How cool is that!

Hope you enjoyed this update, as always I'd love to hear what you think.


	10. Chapter 10

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Chapter Ten

Rachael let out a derisive laugh.

"Well, that certainly sounds dignified." She said sarcastically.

"Doesn't it though?" Amber replied with an equal tone of amusement.

They had long since been relieved of their watch and were now sitting in the main hold, and despite the green faces around them, neither seemed inclined to be sick, a small miracle considering that the ship's rolling and pitching made even the seasoned crew sick.

"Is that really how Jack is telling it?" Rachael asked.

"Actually it is. Normally he would make it sound a bit more heroic on his part, but Elizabeth is standing right there next to him, and she was there too, so he's sticking to the facts."

"A story within a story within a story…" Rachael muttered, a considering glint in her eye. Amber considered this, apparently counting in her head, if the way she was ticking off fingers was any indication.

"Hold on, where'd you get the third tier?" she asked, confused.

"What do you mean?" Rachael asked, somewhat surprised that Amber had paid any attention to her mutterings.

"Well, we're telling a story, so that's one tier, and then Jack's telling a story within our story so that's two, where's the third?" Amber asked. Rachel looked confused.

"I don't know; must have been a slip of the tongue." She said with a shrug.

"I guess."

"Yup."

"Sure beats the alternative."

"You bet… wait, what's the alternative?"

"Never mind."

--------------

Soon after Jack's realization, he was startled as Elizabeth, through force of will alone it seemed, clawed her own way up to the serpent's neck, where she settled herself at last, gaunt and pale looking from her struggle to hold on to the creature. This was not the kind of thing a pregnant woman was supposed to be doing, especially as far along as she was.

The storm above still raged madly, and the howling wind and rolling thunder precluded any words, but in truth there was nothing yet to say, their future was by no means assured, for Jack could still not figure out what to do when they had to get off.

Jack did not know anything for certain, he did not know were any nearby land might be, he did not know how long the storm would last, he did not even know for sure what direction they were going, though in his gut he thought they were heading south, or west, or maybe both; it was impossible to tell without the sun.

Though he had reigned in the serpent, in truth he had very little control over it, hardly able to keep it on the surface, let alone make it move in any particular direction. It was quite clearly going were it wanted to go, and that frightened Sparrow more than a little. After all, the serpent was not only malicious and carnivorous, the leviathan was also _intelligent._ Intelligence, as a rule does not necessarily mean the thing could beat him at chess, but it did mean that it could plan, and if he were the serpent right then, he would be planning a way to get them of off its back.

Unfortunately, Jack could think of no way to avoid said eventuality, he would have to wait and see what happened, and deal with it as it happened, or hope that he figured out a way to get away without being eaten before the beastie could try to do them in.

After an hour of struggling to stay on its neck in the broiling, storm tossed waters though, he began to wish that something, anything, would happen. The serpent tore through the water at an unimaginable speed, all the while likely taking them further and further from the Pearl.

Nothing happened though, not for an eternity of struggle and cold and misery, and for the rest of the day and part of the night, both of the castaways clung as tight as they could, wondering when their nightmarish ride would end, and more importantly, _how_ it would end.

At last though, through the rain and stinging cold wind, both so numb they could no longer feel their fingers or even most of their arms, there was a shape, looming out of the pitch black tempest.

Sharp and jagged, it could only be a large island, though in the night, it seemed something much worse. And indeed for the two it could be very bad, it could be the serpent's lair, or something equally as foreboding.

Abruptly the serpent turned sharply to one side, and then the other, twisting its way through the water, slicing around rocks, and jerking about to a degree that no amount of tugging upon the jury rigged reins had any effect; the serpent had waited long enough, and it was determined to be rid of its tormentors.

The jagged points of rock loomed all around now, they were obviously very close to the shore, and it was into these that the creature dove, spinning about and at times brushing so close to the dark cliffs that they were sure to be dislodged. They clung on, though, holding fast for their very lives, and the tighter they clung, the more determined the serpent was to have them off.

The creature leapt clean over a large and particularly sharp looking set of rocks and then dove down inches from the other side, spinning around so that centripetal force alone threatened to throw Jack and Elizabeth to the sea. Miraculously they held on, only to find themselves spinning in the other direction as the serpent tried to catch them off guard.

Up, down, spin, through a tangle of seaweed, leap and spin in two different directions in as many seconds, nearly knocked from its neck as they clipped against a rock, an insane spiraling spin that seemed to last forever, and then ominously, nothing. The serpent was moving in a straight line, building up speed, so that the spray it threw up in its wake was frothing foam that made the stormy waters look meek in comparison.

Jack hardly had time to see the large rock before they hit it, the monster ramming it head on with every ounce of speed it could muster. There was a sickening thud, and then a great black agony that encompassed him and then swallowed him whole, and after that, everything was dark.

----------

Jack did not know it, but he actually died that night, smashed and broken against the rocks, or at least something akin to death, for there was no telling how many different curses and spells and god tricks that the pirate had been exposed to that might grant him immunity from such things. But one thing is certain; Jack would not have returned to the Pearl at all if not for the entity walking upon the tempest wracked shore, strolling along as if the sun was shining and there was only a light breeze. Apparently waiting for _them, _for he did not seem at all surprised or concerned when Jack's broken body was washed up at his feet, and spotting an unconscious Elizabeth a bit further down the shore, waded out to retrieve her as well. With little effort at all, he dragged both the live and the dead further up the beach, where the crashing sea had little chance of ensnaring them and claiming them once again.

He paid little attention to Elizabeth, deeming her of no further importance now that she was out of harms way, instead he looked at Jack, shaking his head and clucking his tongue.

"So you're the one… well, I'm sure no ones going to thank me for this, save for you if you were to find out, but you're far too amusing. Let's see how far you get before they catch up to you. No sense in cutting such a grand hunt short." With that said, the being waved a casual hand in the air, and then faded into a darkness that had not been there a moment before, stepping backwards into it so that his last visible feature was a sardonic grin on his jackal face.

----------------

When Jack woke, it was to the sound of singing. Not human singing, no this song had a sound to it that could not be produced by a human throat. He knew exactly what was singing; '_not again.'_ he groaned and rolled over, trying to bury his head in the sand so he didn't have to deal with the creatures he knew he would find. Wait a moment, _sand_?

He sat up stiffly, slowly recalling the events of the previous day; the battle, then the storm, finally the serpent, and then smashing, flashing, grinding pain. He took stock of himself and found to his surprise that he was mostly unhurt. Now that was peculiar.

He looked around, and found himself to be on a rocky beach, tall cliffs towered above, and carved into the cliffs were great figures, mostly human but with faces of various animals. The one looming right above him happened to have the face of some sort of grinning dog, perhaps a jackal.

The sun was high in the sky, past its zenith and well on its way to afternoon. How long had he been lying on the beach? At least eight hours, that is if today happened to be yesterdays tomorrow, which when he thought about it of course it was, but was it _his_ yesterdays tomorrow? Now that was the question. Not terribly relevant to his current situation, but still it was a good question.

He finally spotted Elizabeth a short distance away, crouching behind an outcrop of rock that had been fashioned to look like a gigantic foot. Her back was to him and she was peeking over the top of the sea worn stone, peering in the direction of the singing.

Knowing what was singing and thanking the stars that they had not yet seen her, he scrambled over to her, kicking up a lot of sand as he did so, and stumbling a little before he got to her. When he reached her he pulled her down abruptly, so that they were both sitting with their backs to the rock. She looked at him petulantly.

"What was that for" she asked crossly.

"Mermaids are tricky creatures, even when they're not singing all siren like." He informed her gravely.

"They are not singing like sirens, I don't see you submitting to their song any more than I am. And besides, it's not just mermaids, there's a mer_man_ there to."

"Merman!" he said in a surprised bark. He hadn't ever seen a merman, and despite himself he peeked up over the rock.

It was a curious tableau that greeted him, not as strange as some of the things he'd seen, but odd enough.

There was indeed a merman; a well put together chap who wore a crown of kelp. It seemed that the merfolk were holding a mock court; the merman sat upon a rock, beaten by wind and sand and sea until it was hollowed out, almost a throne, and all around him sitting on the shore or splashing about in the water were mermaids bearing gifts of drift wood and sea shells. Their pretty scales flashing in the sun, they played about in the water and in the sand, making foolery of human customs. The mock king wore the kelp on his head like a wreath of roman laurels, in his right hand he held a scepter of gold, encrusted with barnacles, plunder from a sunken wreck, and in is left hand a rough glass orb in a rotting scrap of fisherman's net.

"They had just crowned him when you snuck up behind me; I think they're getting ready to choose a queen." Elizabeth murmured in a low voice, not wishing to disturb the pageant playing out before them.

Despite his wariness, Jack could not help but feel a small bit of the wonder apparent on Elizabeth's face. Here was just one small game in an obviously sophisticated culture, one that the world of men knew nothing about. That such creatures could exist, yet be almost unknown, so that they were a myth to almost all, even the mariners that plied the seas, spoke to him of worlds yet to be discovered, and that even though the edge of the map was ever expanding, there would always be someplace further, someplace that was yet to be discovered. It brought a deep sense of comfort to his soul, and he thought that as long as there was a blank edge to the charts, there would always be a place in the world for Captain Jack Sparrow.

They continued watching the merfolk for a few moments, Elizabeth in wonderment, and Jack in calculation. The last time he had encountered a mermaid, the wench had tried to drown him, and on top of that it was never a good sign for a sailor of any type to see a mermaid; as Gibbs would say, t'is bad luck. It usually meant your ship was about to be sunk in some violent storm. Jack paled. What if that was exactly what this meant? Had the Pearl gone down?

Jack clamped his eyes shut, refusing to see the merfolk at all. He turned and sat back down with his back to the rock and put his fingers in his ears, blocking out the song.

Elizabeth noticed his antics and quirked an eyebrow, wondering what he was about. She reached down and nudged his shoulder, trying to get his attention.

"No… can't hear them, can't see them. They're not there." Jack babbled.

"Jack, what are you talking about?" she said pulling one of his hands away from his ear so he could hear her.

"The Pearl. I'll not have her sink." Jack elucidated before putting his finger back in his ear.

If anything, this puzzled Elizabeth even more. For while she had read quite a bit about pirates in her youth, she had not become familiar with all the lore of the sea, there were some things that were not committed to paper, and only a sailor would quite be able to fathom what Jack was mumbling about, though in truth, Jack's particular fashion of dealing with it would seem odd to anybody.

She looked back at the merfolk, wondering why Jack found them so threatening. They didn't seem too terrible, but then they also didn't know of their presence.

A sense of foreboding stole across her just before the demeanor of the mock court changed, abruptly their manner switched from playful to watchful, as if they had heard something, and then they were every one of them gone in a flash, disappearing back into the surf as if they had never been on the beach at all.

Elizabeth, curious as to what had scared them away, stepped out from around the rock that had concealed the two castaways, walking out onto the clear strip of beach were the mermaids had just a few moments before been playing. There was not a trace of them, no sign that they had even been there.

Well almost. The king's glass orb sat in the sand. Bending down slowly, she picked it up, and stood there blithely, examining it for a moment. It was just a simple glass bubble, nothing special or magical about it. She considered keeping it as a memento, but then she thought better of it, and turned and tossed it back to the sea. It bobbed there, floating on the even surf like a bit of cork before something unseen tugged it down to the depths.

Smiling, she turned back to the cliffs, intending to call back to Jack and ask him why he had been so wary. The words died on her lips as she came face to face with an arrow, knocked and drawn.

It was not just the one arrow really, but a whole slew of them, and behind each of the strangely curved bows, was a grim eyed native. It was odd though, they were not your average swarthy Caribbean island natives, in war paint and loin cloths; these were taller and very much cleaner than one would expect to find, and the skin color was wrong as well; it was gold brown. All in all she did not know what to think, except for the obvious that is. They had weapons, they were pointed at her, and she was scared.

There was a yelp of surprise from behind the rocks, and a native stood up from behind it holding a sword to Jacks throat. Jack did not look happy, and he sent an angry look at Elizabeth, as if this were somehow her fault. She gazed coolly ahead, ignoring his heated glare, it may very well be her fault, but she would be damned if she admitted it to the pirate.

There were fifteen total, far too many to even dream of fighting, and if she tried to run, she would be peppered with arrows before she could move two steps, not to mention they would likely slit Jack's throat.

Not left with an over abundance of options, she put her hands in the air, wondering what it was they wanted.

A small woman with long straight black hair stepped out of the crowd of tall archers. She had a bow of her own, but it was slung across her back, out of the way. Like the rest of them she wore starched white clothing of an odd cut, a pleated kilt like ensemble that ended just above the knee, but additionally she wore a broad necklace of gold, and a small gold circlet glittered on her brow. She was obviously important, and apparently, she was the leader of the small band of warriors. As she stepped forward the bows were lowered, but the one holding Sparrow did not release his grip.

"Ikwina tep motikep seh?" the woman asked in a strange language. Her tone was commanding and the way she stood had more than a little haughtier to it. When Elizabeth just looked at her blankly, her mouth compressed into a fine line, apparently annoyed at Elizabeth's inability to comprehend their language.

"Hable espaniol?" she asked, this time in Spanish. Elizabeth recognized the language this time, but unfortunately, she had never been very good at learning foreign languages, her father had tried to teach her both Spanish and French but she had never been able to quite grasp them.

"Then you better know English, because if you don't, I'm going to have you shot right now." The woman said. Her accent was clipped and strange but nonetheless was understandable.

"No don't shoot! We know English- we promise!" Jack said.

"I see. Now, you will tell me why I shouldn't shoot you anyways. You are not only trespassing upon our sacred island, but you have also interrupted my hunt."

"Your…hunt?" Elizabeth asked, wondering what the quarry had been, surly she couldn't mean the merfolk?

"The fish kin. They are not terribly good sport, but they make excellent trophies." The woman said. Elizabeth felt herself sickened at the thought of hunting something with a human face, but trophies! The thought made her ill.

Elizabeth wasn't so sure that they had been the ones to scare the merfolk any way. They had been there for some time and they had not been noticed. No, it was far more likely the approach of this woman's hunting party that had sent them fleeing back to the depths. However Elizabeth was not in a position to be pointing this out.

"Enough of that," the woman said, banishing the irrelevant subject. "How is it you came to our island?"

"I'm not sure. We're castaways, and as far as I know, we just washed ashore." Elizabeth was careful not to mention the serpent; there was no telling why the thing had brought them here, but it was best to keep the story simple and believable.

"That is strange indeed. The currents do not normally bring things to us, but instead keep them away." She narrowed her eyes at Elizabeth, as if she knew there was something more to there story. "Well, your life was not destined to be long; I will do you a favor and kill you now instead of bringing you to the mercy of the interrogators."

She turned away and began walking back towards the cliffs. She raised an elegant hand, unspoiled by work or grime, and with it the archers raised their weapons, training them once again upon the two lost souls. Elizabeth braced herself, wondering at the strange irony of it. It went against all convention, the natives were supposed to capture you, and plan some elaborate ritual death for you, giving you ample time to make a daring escape, they weren't supposed to kill you outright. But then, these natives weren't following any other convention, so why should they start now?

Instead of bringing her hand down, and signaling her men to kill them however, she stopped, looking at the cliffs. She made a curt gesture in the air, and the archers once again lowered their taught bows. She stood there for a long moment gazing up at the statues carved into the cliff face; all the while Elizabeth hardly dared to breath, wondering what was going through her mind.

The woman turned, moving so suddenly that Elizabeth jumped a bit in surprise; Jack probably would have jumped to, if not for the very sharp sword being held to his throat. There was a gleam in the dark woman's eyes, a gleam that sent a cold shiver down Elizabeth's spine, it did not bode well for the two, but then, it had to be better than death, right?

"Peteth ka magh! Suti mo ksip teth Anubis sep Nepthys! Ser!" she said. Ordering her men to do something, though what, was beyond Elizabeth.

The archers shouldered their bows, and the man holding a sword to Jack's throat withdrew the blade and sheathed it. There was an odd mix of expressions on their faces, varying from awe to fear. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you viewed the matter, Elizabeth did not have long to analyze these expressions before, to a man, all began running, bounding up a steep, narrow path that Elizabeth had not noticed before, likely because it was half hidden by another great statue, this one of a woman with wings over her arms.

The small woman made no move to follow them however; instead, she turned to Elizabeth and Jack, the pirate having moved out from behind the rock to stand with his companion.

"If you wish to live, you will do _exactly_ as I say." She said with a menacing glitter in her eye.

Elizabeth wondered if there was, in fact, a fate worse than death.

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A/N: well, this has to be the fastest I've ever updated. I hope you're all proud of me.

I hope you guys liked the bit about the mermaids, that bit practically wrote itself, in fact this entire chapter did. I suppose it's because I'm getting into the part of the story I really wanted to write. I have had the story planned out entirely for a long while now, but my business, and a touch of writers block had kept me from this story for months, as I'm sure you've noticed. The depression arc, where everyone on the Pearl was grieving, was so hard to write, especially since I knew they weren't dead, but I knew I couldn't skip ahead, I'd be too tempted to post it, and that would have changed the feel of the entire story.

You might be amused to know, I had been planning on putting Miguel and Tulio, of El Dorado fame, in this fic, as minor characters, I even had their introduction written up before I decided that they just didn't quite mesh, and I just know that if I had tried to stick them in here anyway, they would have tried to steal the spotlight, characters like them will do that. I did however, save what I had written, so if you guys want to read an amusing little side track, send a review or drop me a message, and I'll stick it into my next author note. (Hopefully it will be soon)

Until next time,

-Sirval


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

"Cool! Mermaids and spoiled Egyptian princesses. You really weren't kidding about the Egyptians were you Amber?" Rachael said, truly enjoying the twists the tale was taking. Her faith was once again restored in Sparrows legend, and the story seemed much brighter to her, however dire the straits the heroes found themselves in.

Amber shrugged; a sort of half gesture that could mean anything. Rachael continued musing.

"But how did they end up in the Caribbean?" she wondered.

"I don't think that is particularly relevant to the story; maybe this is another version of the lost city of Atlantis. Or yet again, perhaps they are the supernatural descendants of Egypt's first born taken by the plague, their essence relocated by a merciful god? In the end though, they probably colonized, just like every other great empire." Amber finished.

"Oh, how… plausible." Rachael said, not really sure what to think.

"How they got there, while I'm sure it would be an epic tale to itself, is not important at the moment, let it just be that they are there. That is the important part." Amber said, and once again the story surrounded them, in a thick haze of imagination, becoming so real that they were not entirely sure that it was not they who were being dreamed up.

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"You are Anubis." The woman said, pointing at Jack, who looked more than a little alarmed.

"And you are Nepthys." She said to Elizabeth. "You will answer to no other names, Giska tep?"

"Come again?" Jack said. The woman grimaced, obviously disliking the fact that she had to speak any language but her own.

"Do you understand?" she said through clenched teeth.

"Well, I do now…" he said with a roguish grin. Elizabeth had to wonder at the wisdom of antagonizing a woman who seemed only too willing to kill them. Before the smaller woman could say anything, however, Jack continued, pressing what he considered his advantage.

"So darlin', now that you've introduced us, how's about you introduce yourself?" he asked, infuriatingly chipper now that there was no longer a sword at his throat. Judging from the look on the princess's face, she wished that there was.

"You can call me 'your highness."

"Well I'd hardly call you _my_ highness, and I think asking us to call you 'your highness' would be coming it a bit high, considering as we're gods and all. Best to be tellin' us your name, luv, or it'll end up being something like 'my child'." Jack accompanied this speech with several odd flourishes of his hand.

Elizabeth furrowed her brow in confusion. '_Gods?'_ had he finally lost it, or did he know something about this strange place? He hadn't seemed to recognize the language, but then, Jack also didn't _seem_ very threatening, and she had seen the lie of that.

"My name is Katimetthabatrep." She said, looking down her nose at the pirate. She was almost as tall as him, so she didn't have to crane her head back… too far.

"Katimaboboowhat?" Jack asked innocently, or as innocently as he could, given his profession. However, when the princess's eyes flashed so hot they threatened to incinerate him on the spot, he backed down.

"Katimetthabatrep." He amended, surprisingly getting the entire thing right. There was definitely more to Jack than met the eye.

Elizabeth, on the other hand was fairly sure that she wouldn't be able to get the princess name right, ever. She wondered if she could get away with simply calling her 'princess'.

Come to think of it, Katimett had never actually introduced herself as a princess; she was just assuming that part, she could have another title entirely, so it was probably best to stick with her given name as best as possible.

Mollified by Jacks correct pronunciation of her name, Katimett settled back into an easier mood, smiling a crooked smile, beautiful on her high boned face, but the sincerity in the smile did not reach her large dark eyes. The only thing in her eyes was greed. The princess stood to gain something from keeping the two castaways alive, and Elizabeth was sure that as soon as they ceased to be useful, they would be disposed of.

"Yes you will be playing the part of gods; Anubis, the laughing god of the underworld, and Nepthys, the hidden one, goddess of mystery, the other half of Isis. At least their mortal incarnations; neither of you would be able to pull off any semblance of immortality." Katimett said disdainfully. Elizabeth got the impression that there wasn't much she didn't say disdainfully.

"Ah, but how are you going to convince anybody of that if neither of us speaks any of your language? It seems really… stupid to try and convince your people that their gods came down from heaven without knowing a lick of their language." Jack countered.

"Exactly the reason you will not be speaking… at all." She said.

"How's that?" Jack asked, genuinely curious.

"You will take cues from me. I will gesture to you like this, as if inviting your opinion," she did so, sweeping her hand towards them, palm up. "If I use my right hand, you nod affirmative, if I use my left, you shake your head negative." It was obvious that her mind was racing, coming up with her plan as quickly as possible, and in some cases, making it p as she went.

"Seems simple enough," Jack agreed. "but what happens when something goes wrong? Say somebody gets one of us alone without you there?"

That stopped her for only a moment, and Jack could see the gears in her mind racing to come up with a solution. They did not race for long, whatever she may be else wise, she was certainly a fast thinker. She was obviously a very good politician.

"After I introduce you to my father and his court, and what needs to be said is said, I will have you taken to the temples of Anubis and Nepthys respectively-" she said. Jack opened his mouth to protest, he wasn't too sure if he liked how the princess planned to separate them. Divide and conquer was an all too effective strategy. But she did not give him any window for argument. "Once there, you will, on pain of death, speak to no one and acknowledge nothing that is said to you, act as if you do not even see them. It will not seem strange; as gods, the people will expect you to act aloof"

"So you're saying that the common people of your island do not have any right to interact with your gods?" Elizabeth asked coldly.

"No, why should they?" she said as if Elizabeth had just asked a very stupid question.

"Do your people not revere the same gods you do?" Elizabeth asked.

"Of course they do, there are no other gods." Katimett said simply.

"Then what gives you the right to speak to them when you obviously think your people do not?"

"Divine right." The princess snarled, disliking being questioned "I am of a line that was chosen to rule a millennia ago, by the gods themselves. And I might remind you that you are on very dangerous footing here, it is only with my help that you have a chance of living to see the next sunrise, so do not test my patience by questioning traditions older than the bones of this island."

Elizabeth realized that she had in fact gone too far, she should know better than to antagonize the woman, she had been thinking as much just a few moments before, but there was something about Katimett that rubbed her the wrong way.

"Sorry." Elizabeth said, though she could not manage to put much sincerity into the apology. Katimett did not seem mollified in the slightest; however, she quite obviously had bigger fish to fry. The two were a means to an end and nothing else.

"Now, you will follow me."

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The path had seemed endless, not to mention the climb up the cliffs, which, had Jack been on his own, might not have been such a problem, but he had to support Elizabeth most of the way up. So by the time they reached the city, he was quite exhausted. He supposed being captain had softened him up, he certainly wasn't getting as much exercise as he used to. And he wasn't getting any younger, that much was certain.

The trail the princess led them on was nothing more that a little used track through the dense jungle. It was a long winding path, running alongside a wide river, and it took them the better part of the afternoon to make their way through the dense underbrush. The jungle teemed with animals, though most did not seem indigenous to the area. Apparently when the Egyptians had come here, they had brought their own wildlife with them, though what had possessed the original colonists to bring an honest to god _crocodile, _or even for that matter, a hippopotamus, was beyond Jack

When they did reach the city, however, he was truly amazed. '_They really are bloody Egyptians' _he mused. It was as if he had just stumbled upon Cairo. An older, grander Cairo, still in the grip of ancient history.

Overlooking the city from the edge of the jungle, Jack could tell that these people had lived here for a very long time. The city was huge, situated in the middle of an enormous valley, taking up a good portion of the center of the island. Later Jack would learn that there were two cities on the island; this one was considered the capitol, and the other on the opposite side of the island was built around the only harbor on the island, housing a small but respectable fleet of fishing boats.

On either side of the great sprawl of humanity to the north and south were two mountains that had an extinct volcano look to them. Each had in places been heavily excavated, where the miniature civilization had cut the rock from the mountain as if carving flesh from a carcass. The quarried stone obviously used to build the small pyramids that lay to the east of the city, directly in line with the rising sun.

Surrounding the city were fields, and small dirt roads segregated them into individual plots, carts and wagons and people on foot plied these roads back and forth between the fields and the city.

They walked through the outer fields, where farmers were hard at work, harvesting everything from wheat to tropical fruits. Not all of the crops were native to the island, either; Jack recognized crops from around the world; rice chief among them. Apparently it was not just the Nile River that had given Egypt its fertility, its people were natural agrarians.

Then they passed through the fields and came upon the city itself, on the outskirts it was an unorganized sprawl of dwellings, home to the farmers and some of the poorer artisans. This section made up the majority of the city, and the princess walked straight through it, apparently unconcerned with squalor around her. Wherever she walked, a hurried path was made for her as the common people hurried to get out of her way, nobody seemed eager to raise her wrath.

The people kept their eyes carefully downcast as the princess passed through them, but as soon as she was past them their eyes snapped up, gazing curiously at Jack and Elizabeth who trailed a few steps behind. The confused murmuring of the people followed in their wake.

After an interminable period of time they reached the inner city, simple clay gave way to true alabaster, the merchants and artisans all vying for space in the huge marketplace, and the larger dwellings of the well to do tucked here and there amidst brightly colored awnings selling wares as exotic as the riches of the far east. Here too were the temples of the many gods these people worshiped.

Curiously enough, the most revered temple seemed to be one of the more humble in nature, though it still had beautiful architecture decorated with many hieroglyphics, it was not as lofty, nor as gilded. It had a statue of a cat headed goddess presiding over the entrance and at the statues feet lay a great heap of offerings, from fresh produce, to small amounts of money, even a large goat, tethered a bit away so that it could not eat the rest of the goddesses offerings.

When Jack looked around, it was no small wonder that the people paid such tribute to this deity; the city was crawling with cats, all of them sleek and well cared for, but apparently mostly feral; these animals shied from touch and would not except food from hand. These were not parlor pets for the wealthy; these were, to all intents and purposes, the island's pest control. Jack had heard legends of the Egyptians respect for cats; he was amazed at the scale of the truth though.

The merchant ring was not Katimett's destination, though; she was bound straight for the inner city, were beautiful alabaster spires glittered in the sun, and the palace of her father, the Pharaoh, soared above the rest of the city.

The outer court yard was paved entirely with smooth white stone, and was more than a hundred meters in length, and fifty in breadth. Again, towwering statues lined the court like impassive sentinels, wise, unblinking eyes staring straight ahead at a level of sixty feet. Jack had not seen any of these particular figures back on the cliff face, nor at any temple entrance, so he did not know what significance these ageless men and women bore, but they were honored, that much was certain.

Katimett waved a casual hand gesturing to the statues.

"My ancestors, the pharaohs of Kuhn." She said in an indifferent tone. For someone who had earlier been rubbing in the fact that her family had presided over the island for centuries, it was not quite the introduction you would expect. After all, it was not everybody who could not only trace their lineage back centuries, but had a recorded family tree in the form of sixty foot statues.

More than likely, she was acting; trying to impress them that something so grand was commonplace to her. And indeed, when Jack looked at her, every line of her body spoke of pride. It was obvious that she someday wanted a place in this courtyard, alongside the mightiest kings her islands past had to offer.

As they traversed the courtyard, Jack noticed that more than a few of the square paving stones, each nearly ten feet across, had been replaced with deep pools, full of reeds, and what he hoped were ornamental fish. The pools were arranged in such a manner that it was impossible to approach the grand hall in a straight line.

They did not enter the palace through the grand hall though. As they neared the end of the courtyard, Katimett led them to the left, down a small paved path that led to one of the palace wings. The path wound through a carefully manicured garden filled with tropical flowers and small, tame birds. It terminated in a secluded patio, shaded by low trellises laden with climbing vines and bright flowers that Jack could not name. Here, it seemed, was the entrance to the princess's apartments, for without hesitation she led them inside.

The first room seemed to be a bathhouse, with a shallow bathing pool set into the floor, empty at the moment, but with large ceramic jars nearby for servants to fetch water with. The entire floor of this room was covered in a beautiful tile mosaic; blue and green hues mixing together to form abstract patterns. Katimett did not linger here, and led them swiftly through a lightly curtained door way that led to the rest of her chambers.

The next room was a lavish parlor furnished with well made divan, chairs, and a large table. There were three entrances to the room, and each was curtained with shimmering gauze, so that you could only see faint shapes in the next room, but the air still flowed freely through the apartments. The room's tone was warm, and was decorated in lavish red and fine beige.

Oddly enough, the princess's eyes were drawn to the fine camphor table, upon which rested several clean pressed garments, quite a bit of jewelry, and some strange tools. It was apparent that she had not been expecting to find this, but after a moment she smiled.

"_Too smart…_" she muttered in her own language, almost too quiet to be heard. After a moment's reflection, she turned to her two prisoners; they wore no chains but they were at her mercy as surely as if they had been.

"Strip." She ordered. Jack smiled a wide, lascivious, grin full of gold teeth, and Elizabeth's propriety warred with her common sense. They both knew perfectly well why they had to strip. If they were to be gods, they obviously had to look the part. That knowledge still didn't stop Jack's suggestive smile. Elizabeth rolled her eyes in exasperation. He was entirely too much of a rogue, a pirate to the end.

Elizabeth stepped forward, looking at the items on the table.

"Which are mine?" Elizabeth asked. The princess took a moment to examine the various articles of clothing, picking out and separating it all into two piles.

"These are yours." She said indicating the right hand pile. Elizabeth gathered it all into her arms and began moving back towards the bath.

"Were are you going?" Katimett asked sharply.

"To strip down and change." Elizabeth replied. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"What is wrong with this room?" Katimett asked.

"I believe this room is occupied." Elizabeth said with a glance at Jack, who had already shed his vest and shirt and was busy with the buttons of his trousers. Normally, he would have protested being made to wear clothing that wasn't his, but he was no stranger to disguises; having once pulled off a transformation from pirate to cleric with no one the wiser, that is, until he tried to steal the relic from inside Saint Mary's altar. Also he just couldn't resist irking Miss Lizie's highborn brow.

He finished with the buttons and placed his hands as if he were about to pull down his faded blue trousers, Elizabeth quickly turned away. He snickered a bit, as he hadn't actually done anything.

Elizabeth continued on her way to the bath, and Katimett, though obviously annoyed, did nothing to stop her. She turned to Jack, a sneer on her lips.

"I suppose you want privacy as well?" She said. Her harsh look changed as her eyes flicked across his bare chest, taking in all of the scars.

"He went through hell and back, and came back smiling." She said with a far away look in her eyes. Jack felt a shiver go down his spine. How did she know? He decided to play it cool.

"What's that luv?" he asked as if he had not quite heard her. Her eyes cleared.

"Anubis. He went through hell and came back. And even after everything he'd been through, he could still smile." She explained

"Oh." He said, trying to hide the relief in his voice. For a moment he had been sure she was talking about him. But no, it was probably just his scars had reminded her of the myth. They were indeed an impressive set of marks, but in reality, Hell had been the easier to survive.

With his trousers still unbuttoned, and his shirt gone entirely, he took the time to examine his costume. The same fine pleated linen that anybody with any sort of wealth seemed to wear on this island, sandals, a circlet, armbands, a wide gold collar designed to sit across the entirety of his shoulders, and two decorative tools that looked like a scourge and a crook. He didn't know what they were for, but he was sure that there was some sort of symbolism to it.

He was about to remove his pants and don the strange ensemble, but for some reason he suddenly felt self conscious, which was unlike him in the extreme. There was something about the predatory gleam in the princess's eyes that made him unsure if he wanted to expose any…delicate bits, just yet.

"Actually, I think I'll be takin' you up on that offer of privacy." He said. She regarded him for a long moment, giving him a look obviously designed to make him feel like a worthless bug. The problem is, Jack had never put much store into aristocracy, and on the rare occasion when he dealt with anyone higher than duke or duchess, I.e. anybody who actually lived in a bloody castle, he treated them with gleeful irreverence, and didn't care in the slightest what kind of holier than thou attitude they tried to cop. Of course it was usually at that point that said aristocrats would call the nearest available sword arm to have him beheaded, but Jack had gotten good at making escapes, daring or otherwise.

However, the situation here was different. Princess Katimetthabatrep had sword arms, and bow arms, and all manner of other deadly arms, but she needed Jack, and Elizabeth as well. He didn't know quite why she wanted them to pose as gods, but it was obvious that she needed them for something. And because she needed them she couldn't get rid of them. Jack intended to keep it that way, and he had the benefit of knowing a few things she didn't. For one… he was Captain Jack Sparrow.

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A/N: short chapter I know, but to make up for it, here's that section I was telling you about, with Miguel and Tulio. If I had used it, it would have fit right about the end of chapter eight, when everything on the Pearl and Essandra is being repaired.

Congratulations, you bought the extended DVD version of this fic, complete with deleted scenes and author's commentary.

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Whatever the case, when voices began drifting up from water level, Will, who was working hard over the makeshift forge the crew had set up for him on deck, thought he had finally lost it. The voices carried on their conversation in Spanish, a language that Will was not entirely ignorant of.

"It looks like a pirate ship." A light voice said in jovial tones

"Well of course it's a pirate ship, you don't see ships of the Spanish armada hoisting flags like that for laughs!" An aggravated voice responded.

"Well, what if it was a really slow night?" the first voice asked innocently.

"No, Miguel, you said it yourself, it's a pirate ship." The second said tersely.

"Do you think they might be able to help us?" the first voice, presumably Miguel, asked after a pause

"No, no, no! Their pirates, a day in a pirate brig, and you'll wish you were back in Cortes's hands!"

"Cortes _was_ taking us to Cuba though." Miguel added helpfully.

"To work as slaves! Tulio to Miguel, I think the sun has finally fried what little wits you have left. Pirates- do- not- help- people!"

"But what if their nice pirates?"

The second voice, which called itself Tulio, made an inarticulate gargling sound that persisted for a few moments before calming down enough to speak.

"Miguel?"

"Yes Tulio?"

"Remember that little voice we keep talking about?"

"Which one?"

"The one that- what do you mean which one? How many are there?"

"Well, there's the one that tells me to-"

"No, never mind, I don't want to know. I'm talking about the one that warns you of danger. It-"

"How come I never hear it?"

"Because you have to be quiet first!"

At this point Will had set down is work, carefully placing everything so as not to cause a fire hazard, and had moved to the port side, were the voices were coming from. He was not the only one to hear them however, for he was joined at the rail by several others who were working on deck.

Looking down over the Pearls gleaming black sides, Will found the source of the voices. The sight that greeted him was hardly threatening, and if indeed Will thought he would ever be able to laugh again, he might have found the sight slightly comical.

A small jolly boat corked and bobbed on the gentle swells, filled to bursting with its four passengers; a bright blond man with what seemed a perpetual grin, a dark haired man that looked to be on the verge of strangling the blond man, a bronze skinned woman with eyes like a fox, and a horse.

The woman noticed their pirate audience immediately, but though she tried to get the attention of the two men, speaking rapidly in a different language entirely, they seemed intent on carrying out their argument.

Slowly however, the two became aware of their surroundings. The blond one smiled widely, and switching to heavily accented English, asked;

"Hello! I don't suppose you know what year it is do you?"

"Miguel!" the dark haired man exclaimed.

"What? We're here, so we might as well ask." Miguel said reverting to Spanish.

"Mataka na tuosha mika not!" The woman said, apparently exasperated with both of them. This time, the two paid attention to her, instantly slipping into the strange language and conversing with her.

It was a very heated debate, and Will found himself wishing he had even the vaguest ideas of what was being said.

Bootstrap, emerging from the stern castle to see why there wasn't any work being done, made his way to the source of the disturbance. In a moment he had assessed the situation.

"Bring them aboard." He said simply. And while the three strangers were still arguing, several pirates had leapt down into the leaky jolly boat and had hustled them aboard before they quite realized what had happened.

All three of them, as well as the horse, stood on the deck with perplexed expressions on there face. It was amazing how well even the horse conveyed this emotion.

"Miguel and Tulio." Bootstrap said, the note in his voice making it known that he had met the small group before.

"how do you-?" the blond one started. But Bill interrupted him.

"We have a mutual acquaintance. He told me about you three, you know, when he was telling me how he had learned of Cortes' cursed treasure."

"You told someone about the treasure?!" the blond one said, apparently outraged.

"Don't look at me." The dark haired man said.

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A/N continued: I had originally intended working them in as an explanation as to how Jack might have come across the myth of isla de muerta; who better than a pair of adventurers who had seen it happen? But then I realized that I have to many kettles on to boil as it is, I didn't need another plot line, and our two whimsical Spaniards were a bit too humorous for that part of the story. However if you really liked this section and think they should be in this story anyway tell me, 'of hell' isn't even halfway done, so I'm positive they could be worked in later if I get an overwhelming response. If none of you say anything however, I'm just going to leave the two as a deleted scene, it works either way for me.

On another note, I saw the third pirates the other day, at the El Capitan in Hollywood; they had an organ player entertaining the crowd before the movie, it was pretty cool. As for the movie itself, I was amazed at how good it was! Omfg! I'm not going to say anything specific, because I don't want to give it away for those of you who have not seen it, but it was brilliant, and very un Disney like, in fact it was very much like Serenity in regards that they weren't afraid to do anything to the characters, and with that ominous thought I will leave you. If you haven't seen it, watch it; it's better than number two, and almost as good as number one, better, if you're judging by the sheer amount of action.


End file.
